Metacritic-Rezensionen

In 2022 it’s a true gift seeing a film so unafraid of being as lurid, provocative, and unabashedly horny as Deep Water. Perhaps it took a seemingly retired master of the genre to resurrect the erotic thriller, and hopefully this somewhat buried release won’t cause people to miss it, or for its cultural footprint to not stand the test of time as it deserves.

Most remarkable about Deep Water is the fact that beyond being a sexy and gruesome thriller, it is also an absolute riot.

Lyne can laugh at these people because he holds little respect for them, and there’s a general sense of revulsion directed here towards the rich and reckless. His camera navigates queasily through the film like he’s capturing a natural disaster in action.

While the filmmaker’s craft has never been shakier than it is in this stilted and wildly uneven tale about the twisted strings that tie some couples together, it’s also never been clearer that said filmmaker is Adrian Lyne. Not only does this delirious movie find him swan-diving back into the same fetid lap pool of envy, lust, and psychosexual control where he used to swim laps every morning, it finds that he’s basically got an entire lane to himself.

Deep Water contains some earnestly committed performances, a ridiculous car chase, a snail emporium, and a sparkling teaser for Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe in Andrew Dominik’s “Blonde.” The dynamic between her and Affleck is fascinating: not ridiculous enough to be camp, but not far off.

Lyne’s return to the sweat-soaked stage trades bodice-ripping intrigue for repetitive boredom and psychosexual mind games with a straightforward descent into semi-madness.

Deep Water, which was written by Zach Helm (of Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium) and Euphoria Svengali Sam Levinson, never creates any sense of internal coherence in its toxic main pair.

Despite his erotic thriller credentials, Lyne makes a tepid return to the director’s chair with a rather basic adaptation of an intriguing marital character study that Affleck struggles to enliven.

Just occasionally, Lyne brings the right kind of flash, brash and trash to this fantastically silly and unbelievable story. But the film plods along in such a disconcerting way: there is no ratcheting up of tension, or plausible psychology.

I do see one bright future for this film: the Deep Water drinking game, where the Bingo squares read “Melinda’s dress falls off,” “Vic clenches his jaw,” and “Naked breast.” Everyone will end up very, very drunk