Idris Elba and Taraji P Henson star in ‘No Good Deed’, a thriller about a sociopath who smooth-talks his way into a young mother’s house. Her life is turned around in one terrorizing night as she fights for her survival.

Directed by Sam Miller, the film features violent fight scenes, which Henson says were some of the most difficult she’s ever had to shoot.

“It was probably the most challenging thing I’ve done outside of playing a 70-year-old woman and it was probably the most challenging thing I’ve done in my career,” she says.

“Physically challenging, mentally challenging. The whole time I’m thinking, ‘I don’t want to hurt him’ and I know he is thinking the same thing about me. The adrenaline gets going. People don’t realize what goes into a fight scene. That last fight scene took us three nights to film – three nights.”

To capitalize on the sense of realism, the makers of the film chose to shoot primarily at night.

Such a schedule was a tough for the whole team, but Elba says they were able to turn sleep deprivation into something positive.

“The idea is that we are shooting at night, people are tired, people are irritable, you have to pay more attention and be more concentrated. But we used that to help us get through and navigate through these rooms, and this section, and this is what happens here… It was hard, actually, to remember, ‘Where are we? Where are we in the story? What happens next?’,” he says.

Although the film has received some negative reviews with critics calling it “a sadistic mess” and “mediocre”, ‘No Good Deed’ is performing above expectations at the box office in North America where it opened last month.

The movie is on global release this autumn.