SCARPETTA

This adaptation of the popular Patricia Cornwell novels, starring Nicole Kidman as forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta, poorly mashes together two books (#1 and #25) set three decades apart. Four adults share Scarpetta’s house, including her husband Benton Wesley (Simon Baker), her sister Dorothy (Jamie Lee Curtis), and Dorothy’s husband Peter Marino (Bobby Cannavale), with Scarpetta and Dorothy constantly at each other’s throats. An investigation into a series of murders with a familiar MO quickly gets buried under the vicious family drama that plays out like a soap opera. The creative licence taken to modernise proceedings for a 2026 audience results in Dorothy’s daughter, Lucy (Ariana DeBose), having a home set-up of facial recognition and tracking software more advanced than the FBI, and her deceased wife Janet is resurrected via a silly and annoying AI avatar. The plot quickly turns into a confusing jumble, and there are so many characters dropping in and out between the different time frames that I turned to Google every few minutes just to work out who was who. Frustratingly the current cops, retired cops, suspended cops, and medical staff all overstep their professional boundaries to meddle where they shouldn’t. While the books are lauded for their high level of accuracy regarding forensic science, that all falls away here, with the investigative role of Scarpetta stretched far beyond that of an actual medical examiner who realistically spends most of their time in the morgue and lab. And don’t get me started on the big reveal. It’s rubbish. I haven’t read the books, but I hope they are better than this lump of coal.