Deep Water and the Comeback of the Erotic Thriller

Like Glenn Close coming up for air at the end of Fatal Attraction, Deep Water was supposed to signal the return of a genre long since presumed drowned in the bathtub. Directed by Adrian Lyne, whose bunny-boiling classic marked the 80s apotheosis of the erotic thriller, the film was originally slated for release in 2020, alongside Benedetta, another return to former hunting grounds from Paul Verhoeven (Basic Instinct). But then Covid showed up, and the film was kicked down the schedules until it was released straight on to Amazon Prime/Hulu this week.

So – is the comeback still on? Or will the genre’s patented mix of Hollywood sheen and skeezy sexual politics prove unpalatable to the post-#MeToo crowd? In their 80s and 90s heyday, erotic thrillers exerted an enormous pull on audiences, their noirish mix of sex and danger reflecting anxieties around the Aids epidemic and the changing role of women in society. In a 2017 piece proclaiming the genre’s demise, critic Christina Newland asked whether erotic thrillers aren’t best left in the past, with their rogues’ gallery of rutting alpha males-turned-easy marks, and women portrayed as workplace usurpers (Disclosure) or psychotic homewreckers (Fatal Attraction). “Viewed today, erotic thrillers are bitterly cynical about gender relations; they ask us to assume the worst of both men and women,” she wrote. But couldn’t our uneasy relationship with sex today make fertile ground for a revival? What would a modern-day erotic thriller look like, anyway? Eighty-one-year-old Lyne certainly has some fun grappling with the question, delivering a throwback-y thriller that’s at least on kissing terms with more modern takes on gender relations like Gone Girl and Phantom Thread.

The film stars Ben Affleck as Vic, a semi-retired drone manufacturer whose marriage to Melinda (Ana de Armas) seems to be on the rocks. Melinda openly carries on affairs with other men, which Vic professes to be relaxed about, but when people in their circle of friends start showing up dead the nature of their relationship comes into question. It’s a juicy premise which Lyne serves up with lashings of his signature high-gloss style and lascivious sex (if you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to pull one of Ben Affleck’s pubes from your teeth, this is the film for you). The director has expressed regret at the ending of Fatal Attraction – changed, at test audiences’ behest, to give Close’s jilted-lover-turned-stalker her ‘comeuppance’ – and he seems to ward off accusations of misogyny here by giving greater weight to De Armas’s character, a possibly alcoholic, possibly nymphomaniac, often-terrible mother who nonetheless has her ‘reasons’, however hazily defined. It’s nothing that resembles real life as such, but it’s still welcome to be presented with two characters whose ambiguity and curious dynamic is sadly nowhere to be found in most Hollywood fare these days. Then again, maybe things have changed less than we think: Lyne’s last film, 2002’s Unfaithful, was described in an otherwise lukewarm review from the New York Observer as at least being “one of the very few mainstream movies currently directed exclusively to grown-ups”.

Whether it’s enough to kickstart a renaissance for the genre seems doubtful: the film ambles rather than builds to its rug-pulling climax, and fails to impart enough of a believable inner life to its characters to withstand some of its more overwrought elements. De Armas, a highlight of the recent Bond film, gives good sizzle but Affleck mostly just stands around looking gormless, his character lent ‘colour’ by an inexplicable fondness for snails. (Vic to disinterested neighbour: “Did you know snails will climb a 12ft wall to get to their mate?” Neighbour: “You’re a weird guy.”) But it’s still a welcome return from a director whose own obsession has always been the seamier side of what gets us off.