Getting it’s debut at last year’s London Film Festival, ‘Chloe’ is the story of middle-aged doctor Catherine (Julianne Moore) becomes suspicious of an affair when her husband (Liam Neeson) repeatedly comes home late with shoddy explanations. Unable to prove it, she hires escort Chloe (Amanda Seyfried) to seduce him, and then report back to her as to what happened. But as the deception goes on, and Catherine realises the mistake she has made, Chloe becomes more entangled in her life than she had ever imagined.

Despite a huge cast, ‘Chloe’ always feels like a small film. Gazing out the windows of their multi-million dollar houses and moving from one expensive restaurant to another, the characters are very hard to empathise with and the plot soon comes across as a high society soap opera. Turning the film into an erotic thriller (complete with totally over-the-top sex scenes) was a bad choice, meaning the seriousness of the story evaporates in place of seeing far more of Moore than you ever thought you would, but the overall intrigue of Catherine and Chloe’s plot is enough to keep you going, although not on the edge of your seat.

The majority of the film is carried by Moore, who seems on the verge of tears even before her characters’ suspicions start, isn’t awful but for a lead role one would want a little less navel gazing. She doesn’t reach the level of emotion one would imagine you would feel when dealing with adultery, and when the plot takes an erotic thriller twist it just becomes ridiculous. The chemistry between her and Seyfried is zero, with Seyfried herself damaging all the good work done with ‘Mamma Mia’ by putting an appearance that wouldn’t be out of place in a soft porn film. Neeson tragically lost his wife, Natasha Richardson, mid-way through filming, and so whilst it is a fairly absent performance it’s to his credit that he was able to finish the film at all.

A miniscule running time of just over 90 minutes means you don’t get a chance to be that bored, but it’s hard to see this film as anything substantial. A clever finale can’t rescue unsympathetic characters, silly twists and generally a poor attempt at a modern ‘Fatal Attraction.’

Chloe is out in cinemas on 5 March