Civic Duty

Like Hitchcock in small strokes, this tight, reasonably tense thriller paints a convincing portrait of our paranoid times via the meltdown of a weak but decent man. Peter Krause, always reliable as an ineffectual narcissist, plays a jobless accountant whose misplaced frustration—fueled by a familiarly bullying news cycle—finds a target in his new, seemingly Arab neighbor (Naga). The film’s pace lags toward the end, but its grasp of manufactured fear’s dreary pervasiveness never falters. (Opens Fri; Click here for venues.) — Mark Holcomb