Davis Green is the only son of his father Ronald and, as far as Davis knows, Ronald was an only son. But when Alexis Green shows up at Davis’s door claiming to be his cousin, he is drawn to her, and together they are drawn to the smoldering secrets that have kept them and their fathers apart for so many years.

Joseph Cross and Adelaide Clemens give good performances as Davis and Alexis, but the young cousins’ pot-infused tumult isn’t nearly as interesting as the conflict between their fathers Ronald and Joshua, played by Richard Schiff and Ricky Jay. Schiff, best known as Toby Ziegler from television’s The West Wing, is the master of the morose long face. And I would watch this film again if it was just a 90-minute-long shot of Jay, whose face is like a map of the world, dropping Uncle Joshua’s deadpan philosophical and emotional bombs.

The women in the Green family outnumber the men, but with the exception of Alexis, all of them are basically mutes. Screenwriters Justin Lerner (who directed the film) and Katharine O’Brien could have easily enriched this story by creating a few more fully realized people. While they worked hard to make their story provocative (with mixed results—most of the suspense feels manufactured and forced), they were disappointingly lazy when it came to character development.

The Automatic Hate (ugh, that name) is an admirable attempt at questioning why, as individuals and as a culture, we regard certain sexual relationships as taboo—it’s just not as risky a film as it would like you to think. recommended