Jade Halley Bartlett writes and directs “Miller’s Girl”, a wobbly new thriller backed by Seth Rogen’s Point Grey Pictures production company. It’s a film that tries hard to take a nuanced approach to the familiar story of a teacher-student relationship that crowds or crosses the line of appropriateness. But what we get is a movie full of potential that’s never realized.

“Miller’s Girl” teases us with some interesting and possibly complex ideas only to muddle them with its own cleverness. The script is the main culprit, oscillating between artfully provocative and downright silly in its attempt to be subversive and heady. What’s more of an issue is that we are never given a reason to care about any of the characters. There’s no emotional attachment or investment whatsoever, making the story hard to connect with beyond a few surface-level flashes of humanity.

Martin Freeman plays Jonathan Miller, a frustrated middle-aged man reserved to being stuck in a rut both professionally and personally. Jonathan is a failed writer who now teaches high school literature. Meanwhile at home he gets no support from his wife Beatrice (Dagmara Dominczyk), an unsavory alcoholic who never passes up on a chance to emasculate her husband and take shots at his insecurities. There’s clearly more to their marriage story than what we’re given, but as with so much else in the story it’s merely glazed over.

But things take a turn at school with the arrival of a new student to his class, Cairo Sweet (Jenna Ortega). She’s an 18-year-old writing prodigy who has been left alone by her parents to live in their rural Tennessee mansion. As a character, Cairo comes across as smart and assured but ultimately impossible to read. Nothing she does makes much sense. This is especially true after she decides to seduce her teacher for reasons murkier than a glass of muddy water. Is it an act of naïveté from a young girl drawn to her teacher’s attention? Is it a devious use of her sexuality to get what she wants?

As for Jonathan, he’s instantly impressed by his promising new student who shows a surprising amount of interest in her assignments and in him. Their teacher-student relationship grows as Jonathan tries to encourage Cairo to push her creative boundaries. But one particular creative writing assignment pushes things too far, blurring the lines between mentorship and attraction.

Bartlett steers her audience towards what she hopes is a multilayered examination of sexual politics and power dynamics. But the whole thing is paper-thin and comes across as little more than a half-baked erotic thriller. There are efforts to challenge our notions of complicity and make us question who’s to blame – the feckless attention-starved Jonathan or the overly cryptic and sexually charged Cairo. But too many details are missing, and too much time is wasted on side stories that go nowhere, such as the seductive cat-and-mouse game between Cairo’s notoriously flirtatious best friend Winnie (Gideon Adlon) and a coach (Bashir Salahuddin).

To their credit, Freeman and Ortega navigate the shaky material the best they can, almost convincing us to buy into their characters. But even they can’t add bite to a mostly toothless story that’s not nearly as prickly or as uncomfortable as it should be. Bartlett shows she has a knack with the camera and we get flashes of ambition that you don’t always see from first-time filmmakers. But her story and her characters need a more focused script – one that would give the time and attention necessary to make a movie like this have the impact it should. “Miller’s Girl” opens in theaters Friday, January 26th.

VERDICT – 2 STARS