A disillusioned young woman becomes a serial killer who targets wealthy land-owners, and a brilliant detective must use his unusual neurological condition to track her down.

700 million pounds is missing and bank employee Brendan Kelly (Steve Jackson) is arrested for the crime, which is so big it might throw the entire country into a recession.  His girlfriend, Emma Rose (Jo Woodcock) is wanted for questioning but she skips town and goes into hiding.  She changes her look (a bit) and becomes a maid/caretaker to an eccentric (and kind of ruthless) artist, Roger Daniels (James Cosmo), in another town.  When he discovers who she really is, he treats her like a prisoner/slave, and if she doesn’t do as he commands he’ll call the authorities.

She naturally has to kill him, right?

Meanwhile, the police have hired Gabriel Lenard (Cosmo Jarvis) to head up the new experimental behavior unit. Gabriel, who has synesthesia, a condition where some things or people exude colors, is coincidentally a big fan of Roger and meets him at a lecture.  Roger is kind of a dick to him, but, being the big fan that he is, Gabriel doesn’t let it get to him.

Roger gets back home and Emma is past her breaking point. She ties him up, tortures him, and gets the hell out of Dodge. So, as Emma goes from household to household, enduring one indignity after another (well, let’s be honest: some of these things are mere annoyances, not really indignities), she turns into quite the killer. With Gabriel on her trail, her days might be numbered. Mightn’t they?

The idea of watching someone turn into a killer is a fantastic one.  And the introduction of the detective’s synesthesia is a unique addition to what becomes a bit of a boring police procedural.   Unfortunately, Woodcock, as Emma, just doesn’t have the depth of character her arc needs. She comes off as petulant when she should be calculating, and that rubbed me the wrong way.  I wanted to see her become more mature and calculating as she went along, but she seemed to become more immature and childish as the minutes ticked by.

Jarvis does a much better job as Gabriel, the synesthetic detective, and his ability to notice details and connect them with other times and places is nicely shown in dramatic yet subtle ways. His use of Britain’s ubiquitous CCTV cameras to help him is fun to watch.

By no means is this a bad movie. It held my attention throughout (granted, I was looking forward to something a little different than what was presented, but still). Writer/Director Thomas Lawes does a decent job keeping the plot points in order and the story moving along, even while it sometimes looks a little too much like a BBC cop show. Even with a great premise, Monochrome goes timid when it should be bold, safe when it should be scary.  Worth an afternoon, but let’s not plan our whole weekend around it, okay?