It begins as thousands of stories have before – with a dead body and a host of unanswered questions. In The Better Sister, the deceased is lawyer Adam Macintosh (Corey Stoll), husband to high-flying women’s magazine editor Chloe Taylor (Jessica Biel) and father to amenable teen Ethan. As a couple, the Macintosh-Taylors are extremely well off and not particularly sympathetic: she radiates sleek perfection, absolute success and suitable levels of ruthlessness; he seems to be despised by all and sundry – including people unaware of the mind-boggling betrayal his current life is built on. So the question is not so much who murdered Adam and destroyed this family – but why on earth should we care?
The obvious reason is simply to sate our own morbid curiosity, which The Better Sister – an adaptation of the novel by Alafair Burke – expertly cultivates by presenting a dizzying array of potential perpetrators. The first is Chloe herself, who returns home from a dinner party to discover her husband lying on the floor, drenched in blood. But why does she pick up what looks like the murder weapon – her own penknife – and take it with her? Then there’s Ethan, who the investigating officers quickly isolate as their prime suspect due to a robust combo of false alibi, DNA evidence and the fact he staged a burglary at the murder scene. It’s not a great look.
