Save those Ross-and-Rachel and ‘with Friends like these’ jokes for another time: sitcom vet David Schwimmer’s directorial U-turn into adult drama merits ridicule on its own ill-conceived terms. With all the subtlety of a ’50s scare film, Trust tells the story of a happy American family torn apart when 14-year-old Annie (Liberato) is seduced by an internet predator.

Feeling confused, isolated and humiliated, Annie tries to protect the perpetrator while her father, Will (Owen), becomes obsessed with apprehending him. Desperate to gain control over a hopeless situation, Will starts to harass local offenders, alienates his wife (Keener), and soon tunnels into parental hell.

Schwimmer is so committed to telling grim truths about modern living that he abandons the film’s tantalising slide into B-movie exploitation. Amid atrocious lighting and clumsy scene construction, Owen dives headlong into a role that shades toward New Hollywood antihero territory before ceding responsibility to trend-story straw men such as the big, bad Internet. It’s essentially a feature-length elaboration of ‘Do you know where your children are?’, pairing stern message-making with an oddly trashy imagination. Schwimmer can play the scold just fine, but in matters of Trust, he can’t keep his story straight – or even make it serviceable.