Loosely based on, or at least inspired by the Lana Turner, Cheryl Crane, Johnny Stompanato murder, The Devil You Know shows all the signs of having run out of money during principal photography. Valiant attempts to stretch what footage there was into a feature film and give it a stilted, 90s European art-house feel resulted in a 72 minute, stylish mess. That said, the film has its strengths, not least the principal performances. IMDb's Trivia section shows Lesley Ann Warren as having been replaced by Lena Olin. If true, the filmmakers fell on their collective feet. Olin's perfectly cast as the fading star, as is Molly Price as her PA. The real star performance, though, belongs to Rosamund Pike as the daughter in constant fear of being eclipsed. Pike's a great actress in search of the perfect role. She was extremely good as a Bond girl, albeit too subtle for the core audience and she was wonderful in Gone Girl but this is her best performance to date. A perfect portrayal of a daughter locked into a battle with the mother from hell and with plenty of her own demons. And therein lies the attraction of The Devil You Know. At its core, it's a great depiction of a deeply flawed mother daughter relationship. Pointless to speculate on what might have been with solid financing and a firmer hand at the helm. Instead, enjoy for what it is. Warts and all.

I just watched Rosamund Pikes' Return to Sender and was hoping this movie would be better. In fact, it was a lot worse! Many of the scenes had no point, most of the actors were way to serious and uncomfortable looking. The directing was awful and this film was a complete waste of time. There was no tension that a thriller usually has. It was too tedious and seemed like nobody even wanted to make this movie. I don't get it because Lena and Pikes are pros, especially Lena Olin, who's been doing movies forever! It doesn't make sense that they would put out such a poorly made movie like this. The ending was beyond stupid. The movie scores/music was the best part - actually the only good part, except for the constant filming of the girls' legs in the movie.

The movie is 1 hour and 15 minutes long, 12 minutes of those are credits. Half or more of the movie is characters walking, driving, doing nothing DRAMATICALLY with a background music. Script is purposefully confusing in a bad way unfortunately but the plot actually have potential though. With that said you're gonna yawn from start to finish even with the fact that it's just an hour long movie. There's no point watching this unless you want to accomplish some questionable achievement like watching all JLaw movies or something like that.