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Adapted from the 2017 novel by Anna Ekberg (actually a male writing duo), this thriller from Denmark chucks in a bit of everything into the mix: hygge lakeside melodrama, manor-house gothic, and Nordic-noir corruption. But this franticness can’t disguise that it’s a dopey and facile thriller that, despite capable performances, plumbs neither its characters’ depths nor hits thematic pay dirt. It also merits a stiff investigation from the plotting police.

Despite amnesia that leaves her unable to remember her life prior to running an idyllic Norwegian rural cafe, Louise (Natalie Wolfsberg Madueño) is gearing up to get hitched to crime writer Joachim (Pål Sverre Hagen). When a tourist approaches and calls her by another name, she is sufficiently shaken to take a DNA test; it confirms she is actually Helene Söderberg, a Danish shipping heiress presumed dead, with a husband and son back home. Originally found stowed away on a cargo ship, she handed over an ID card – for Louise Anderson – which the authorities accepted. Now wanting to reclaim her identity, she pitches up on the capacious doorstep of company executive Edmund (Claes Bang), her former partner.

Frankly, it doesn’t seem credible that Helene would have remained incurious about her past for that long – especially given her blackout was so total. And director Barbara Topsøe-Rothenborg leads her forward in further implausible style, as she tiptoes around the hallways of her previous moneyed existence, while back in Norway, Joachim wears out Google looking for the truth. There are too many slack and over-convenient revelations, such as the yearbook with ripped-out pages carelessly left around by a conglomerate that has successfully laundered its dirty linen online. Helene’s memory, meanwhile, seems to exclusively recover at moments screaming for further exposition.

With Edmund’s dastardliness confirmed early, his gaslighting is largely robbed of the required psychological tension, however much Topsøe-Rothenborg windmill-tilts the hell out of everything going on under his gothic roof. She prefers to stick with easy shorthand, such as his Mrs Danvers-like mother (Stina Ekblad) hovering at the top of stairways, rather than meaningfully explore Edmund’s damaged psyche, or offer more than expedient engagement with the topic of human trafficking, on which everything hangs here. Madueño is a sympathetic lead, and Bang cannily uses mildness as cover for extreme anger. But they are undermined by a scatty plot that won’t be worrying Stieg Larsson or Jo Nesbø any time soon.

• The Secret Woman is on Netflix from 28 August.