Deep Water – A Trashy Yet Entertaining Erotic Thriller (Early Review)

It’s time for erotic thrillers to get the limelight once again. Dismissed for the most part for being trashy, ridiculous, and over-the-top romps, they arguably don’t always get the attention they deserve. Nevertheless, they consistently still find an audience albeit in mostly straight-to-video formats. Now, the erotic thriller gets the Hollywood treatment with Deep Water, based on the book of the same name by Patricia Highsmith and helmed by Adrian Lyne of some classic erotic thrillers. The film that brought Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas together, they certainly fit nicely within this subgenre. Originally a theatrical release, it settled for a streaming release which is probably for the best as its subject matter will definitely be for a specific brand of audience. Suffice it to say that it won’t be for everyone but something like this was never going to be a major award contender nor did it try to be. Though it’s trashy, ridiculous, and over-the-top, it’s also entertaining in a guilty pleasure kind of way. That being said, including the word deep in the title was admittedly kind of an oxymoron.

For those looking to watch a series of scenes of tension between good looking people in well-architectured homes, Deep Water may very well be for them. The story follows a couple named Vic (Affleck) and Melinda (de Armas) Van Allen whose seemingly perfect marriage was of course not what it seemed. Or at least that’s what it seemed to the people around them. Their relationship was something much more complicated. In order to keep their marriage intact, Vic’s reigns on his wife were very loose under the guise of not wanting to be controlling. Regardless of his true motivations in doing so, Melinda took advantage of that, flaunting herself with a revolving door of men. Her actions did not go unnoticed by everyone else in their town, Vic included, to say the least. Their dynamic, at least on the surface, was mind games between a pair of incredibly flawed and maybe more people who somehow ended up with one another. Whether or not they would end up together by the end is a valid question but with Vic and Melinda’s flawed nature, the ultimate outcome wasn’t a sure thing.

With the word “deep” in the title, some may expect more but that was never really the case as far as the film was concerned. Vic and Melina were a powder keg waiting to explode. However, the film dragged on as viewers were left waiting for that moment to happen. While inevitable, the leadup to that moment got increasingly ridiculous just as Vic became the prime suspect in the disappearance of Melinda’s so-called lovers. From that point on, the life he set up for himself and Melinda began to crumble as his bottled-up fear of losing his wife, resentment, jealousy, or perhaps a combination of the three threatened to put it in jeopardy. The other side of the equation in Melinda lacked even more depth as she was merely a plot device for Vic’s story rather than a character herself. A driving force towards his behavior, both parts could never quite fit together. There was something about their relationship that drew them to one another, however, that aforementioned lack of depth kept the film at the precipice of being more interesting than it was.

In spite of its narrative flaws, the sheer trashiness of Deep Water is entertaining in almost a so-bad-that-it’s-good kind of way. The film and everyone involved all knows what it is and doesn’t try to be anything else. They are reveling in the campiness of it all therefore one can’t help but have fun right with them. At the end of the day, the best part of the film was the performances from Affleck and de Armas and their great chemistry as Vic and Melinda if only in creating a believable pair of despicable people. The restraint shown by Affleck contrasted by the campy and conniving Melinda who bought out more from the character than what was there.

Overall, Deep Water will be an acquired taste but fans of the genre or either leads will have a decent time.

still courtesy of Hulu

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Keith Noakes

The EIC of the coincidentally-named keithlovesmovies.com. A Canadian who prefers to get out of the cold and into the warmth of a movie theatre.