Deep Water (2022)

Adrian Lynch, believed by many to be the king of the erotic thriller, returned after a twenty-year absence in 2022 with this Amazon produced psychological thriller starring Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas. Affleck and de Armas are Vic and Melinda, a married couple who have one young daughter and at no point whatsoever does this feel like a match made in heaven. Melinda’s persistent affairs come to the fore fairly swiftly; Vic sees her kissing a man at a party early on and it seems to be far from the first time he’s witnessed this sort of thing; he then threatens the man, reminding him of a previous lover of Melinda’s who went missing, claiming that he himself murdered him.

Whether or not Vic’s telling the truth in this regard is initially not clear, although as the film progresses the truth of this claim becomes fairly obvious.

For this sort of thing to work the audience needs to believe in the characters and, more pertinently in this case, that the central pair do indeed love each other despite Melinda’s repeated infidelities. And certainly some reviews have claimed that the film works due to Melinda’s affairs being empowering, and that she’s a very strong female character able to take what she wants when she wants it.

Sure, this sort of thing is subjective, and with the divorce rate on the constant increase some people genuinely think that in the modern day marriage vows mean nothing- have a wedding for the party not the marriage- but for me this sort of attitude isn’t empowering, it’s something I cannot get on board with at all, and applying this to the film, it’s really hard to care about either Melinda or Vic, meaning that the film quickly peters out from an engagement point of view.

Having said that, your opinion on the relationship shouldn’t affect whether it’s a good film or not, if it’s of value it will grip you, and Lynch has done this successfully in the past, most effectively with Fatal Attraction (1987). You don’t sympathise with Michael Douglas’ character in the sense that he cheated on his wife, potentially wrecking his marriage and relationship with his daughter, but because the characters remain interesting and you care about his family. Fatal Attraction is a film that is consistently thrilling.

Most of the characters in Deep Water are unpleasant, and despite the fact Affleck and de Armas are very good (Armas especially is excellent, unsurprisingly) and the film is very handsomely shot with an effectively murky blue and black colour scheme, it doesn’t add up to enough to hold your attention. It’s a shame that having waited so long for Lynch to return, Deep Water ends up being a very mixed bag that at times threatens to escape from the doldrums of its central characters’ narcissism but eventually succumbs and drags you into the depths of their utterly unsympathetic behaviour. 5.3/10