Instinct: cold and unconvincing, Halina Reijn’s drama follows a psychotherapist, newly hired to a rehab facility, and her troubled relationship with a sex offender. Hardly any character decision, taken by the protagonists or by supporting characters, makes much sense, so the film is a sequence of emotionally distant scenes, hard to care about the ultimate fate of whoever it is. Carice van Houten plays the allegedly competent therapist with a bit of peculiar energy, but the character is such a cypher that the performance feels purely for show. Marwan Kenzari has the physique du rôle, but hardly projects the manipulative power that is attributed to his character. Aesthetically, the film is indifferent; cinematographer Jasper Wolf’s handheld camerawork is mostly thematically unwarranted.