A boring, meandering thriller that lacks any thrills
There’s something alluring about an erotic thriller. There’s a reason Fifty Shades of Grey has sold more than 150 million copies worldwide. Cruel Intentions remains a very watchable movie, despite releasing in ’99 while Fatal Attraction speaks for itself. Deep Water has absolutely nothing on any of those movies – except maybe Fifty Shades. But even then this is unlikely to be remembered as long as that series has. The best review I’ve seen of this film likened it to Gone Girl if it was made as a Lifetime movie and honestly, that’s probably the most accurate assessment here. Deep Water is not deep, it’s also not particularly enjoyable either and for large stretches of this overlong 2 hour run-time, you’ll find yourself bored to tears. The film meanders along at such a snail’s pace (pun intended) that by the time things actually start to pick up around an hour into the run-time, you’ll find yourself struggling to care. Part of the problem here stems from its two lead characters, Vic and Melinda. Vic is retired from working in a morally questionable field involving drone warfare. He goes for long bike rides, he has faraway brooding looks and he collects snails (hence the earlier pun!) Melinda meanwhile is a fun-loving wife but she’s also a bit of master manipulator, knowing exactly how to push peoples buttons – especially Vic. Vic allows his wife to have affairs in order to avoid a divorce she’s threatening, spending most of his time channeling his inner Gone Girl moody looks as he watches Melinda from afar as she engages with numerous different men. Only, each of these fellas start to disappear in increasingly grisly circumstances. Is Vic responsible? The story plays out as an erotic psychological thriller but it forgets to add any thrills or erotica along the way. There’s absolutely no mystery either, despite the movie trying to act that way for about 20 minutes of its run-time, while the few sex scenes that are here aren’t particularly steamy. I’m not one for crude nudity for the sake of it on-screen, but I can’t help but feel it may have at least livened up what’s otherwise an ice-cold script. The ending is also another point of contention here and while I won’t spoilt that here (we’ll have a separate ending explained up after release for that), the movie just sort of ends without wrapping up any of its plot points. While there’s definitely not a sequel nod of any sort, it’s almost as if the filmmakers ran out of ideas and just wanted to end this project as quickly as possible. Deep Water layers its story with a lot of half-baked ideas that eventually peter out into mediocrity, and eventually annoying plot holes that eventually grow so big that they consume the entire premise of the movie, moving from boring to boring and stupid. There are so many plot holes, unresolved issues and terrible character decisions that you’ll find yourself struggling to care by the time the final credits roll. There will undoubtedly be an audience for this and there are flashes of a good film throughout Deep Water’s underwhelming screenplay. The trouble is, those moments are overwhelmingly drowned out by a sea of disappointment through its bloated run-time. This is a boring, meandering thriller that forgets to add some thrills along the way. But at least only one snail was harmed in the making of this, so there is that.
