TMS Movie Review: Deep Water

(Hulu / 20th Century Studios)

Nearly eight years ago, Ben Affleck played the mostly innocent husband to Rosamund Pike’s psychotic housewife in David Fincher’s Gone Girl (2014). This late March, the roles are reversed and Affleck is a seedy family man with a promiscuous wife played be Ana de Armas in Adrian Lyne’s Deep Water. Not long after Gone Girl was released, there were jokes on the internet of Affleck’s casting being perfect because his own gossip seemed to reflect his character’s [minus the murders]. But in Deep Water, he couldn’t be more different, yet awkward as a creep. Right at the start, it feels like either Lyne, 20th Century Studios or both really wanted their new film to look like Gone Girl, from the cinematography, to the music score, to even the ending.

In a modern day small town in Louisiana, Vic (Affleck) and Melinda (de Armas) are an attractive and locally popular married couple with a young daughter, Trixie (Grace Jenkins). But in reality, Vic & Melinda are far from the perfect couple. They aren’t in love anymore and Melinda prefers to continue living it up as a party girl rather than a dedicated wife and mother. Instead of getting a divorce, they have this private arrangement where Melinda can see other men. Only the affairs are fairly noticeable to their friends and Vic is still secretly jealous of Melinda’s lovers.

Tracy Letts, Finn Wittrock, Jacob Elordi and Rachel Blanchard co-star. The biggest offensives in Deep Water are the general plot and unrealistic dialogue. Lyne’s film is based on a 1957 novel by Patricia Highsmith, so I might be able to buy an ordinary mid-20th century couple in small town America reluctant to get a divorce since the process was still publicly taboo. But in 2022? Who would even care that much about their neighbors’ relationship statuses? There’s no real reason for Vic and Melinda to contemporarily stay together except for Trixie’s sake, but it’s also not helping if she’s raised in this movie’s toxic environment. Is Vic so addicted to his cuckolding kink that he can excuse how embarrassingly obvious and destructive his wife’s infidelity is?

(Hulu / 20th Century Studios)

The dialogue is so laughably ridiculous, it doesn’t surprise me the script was co-written by Sam Levinson, who is usually criticized for penning bad lines. Lyne, much like his filmmaker peer Paul Verhoeven, is famous for his unapologetically frank portrayal of eroticism with past hits like 9½ Weeks (1986), Fatal Attraction (1987) and Unfaithful (2002). But Deep Water almost feels like someone else trying to be both Lyne and Fincher at the same time. Eigil Bryld’s cinematography and Marco Beltrami’s score are pleasing enough, but like I mentioned previously, feel like they’re channeling Gone Girl too much.

As for the cast, de Armas has proven she can act in various genres, most notably in Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 (2017) and Rian Johnson’s Knives Out (2019); as well as a fun cameo in Cary Fukunaga’s No Time to Die (2021). Here though, she doesn’t elevate the film’s flaws on her own and unfortunately, Deep Water’s Melinda isn’t going to be joining the ranks of movie femme fatales like Pike, Kathleen Turner and Sharon Stone. Affleck as Vic is clearly stunt casting that’s also supposed to cleverly be the opposite of his role in Gone Girl. But instead, he goes back and forth between phoning it in as the charming family man and unnaturally intimidating as the antagonist. And humorously, there’s no explanation for why the couples in Deep Water have the women 15-20 years younger than the men.

The best thing to happen to Deep Water is its release as a Hulu exclusive in the midst of pandemic rescheduling. Because between the lame story, unbelievable characters and comical climax; I can’t imagine someone actually paying for a ticket, popcorn+candy and gas, and not end the day thinking, “I could have just saved two hours and watched Gone Girl again.”