Deep Water

Director: Adrian Lyne
Starring: Ben Affleck, Ana de Armas, Tracy Letts, Grace Jenkins, Rachel Blanchard, Kristen Connolly, Jacob Elordi, Lil Rel Howery, Brendan C. Miller, Finn Wittrock 
Running Time: 115 min.
Rating: R

★★★ (out of ★★★★)

A man watches his wife flaunt her extra-marital affairs about town, outwardly accepting that she can do whatever she wants in their open relationship, even while he's viewed as an emasculated joke by their friends. Slowly, he grows tired of this humiliating arrangement and a rage builds inside. No longer able  to contain himself, it's only a matter of time before he snaps. But enough already about Will Smith's marriage. Adrian Lyne's latest erotic thriller, Deep Water, finds the 81 year-old director back in territory reminiscent of some of his most notable and controversial efforts, such as 9½ Weeks, Fatal Attraction, Indecent Proposal and Unfaithful. 

The tone here isn't nearly as sure-footed, but as far as B-movie sleaze goes, it's actually a lot of fun. Of course, this is more of a good time if you're receptive to the idea of watching a darkly comedic parody of those aforementioned films, which some would accuse of already being spoofs of sorts. That it looks great, is well made and carried by two stars as talented as they are famous helps a lot, with both actors totally game and aware of the type of project they're in, committing themselves accordingly.

Vic Van Allen (Ben Affleck) is a wealthy, retired robotics engineer living with his wife, Melinda (Ana de Armas) and their young daughter Trixie (Grace Jenkins) in the small town of Little Wesley, Louisiana. Their combative, almost entirely loveless union is built upon a mostly unspoken arrangement that seems to benefit her far more than he. It's basically understood, even by friends who know them, that they're in an open marriage where she can comfortably take on as many lovers as she wishes just so long as she doesn't abandon her family. 

The flirty, extroverted Melinda relishes attention from men, publicly throwing herself at each new one she encounters as a sullen, morose Vic stands in the corner at parties, seething with jealousy. With his role how relegated to making dinner for her various boyfriends, he's finally had a enough. After Vic makes a not so thinly veiled threat against Melinda's current flame, younger musician, Joel Dash (Brendan C. Miller), about having previously killed one of her ex-lovers, their marriage is now on shakier ground than ever. And when her latest boyfriend ends up dead in a swimming pool, suspicion turns toward Vic, who may or may not be harboring a dark secret that threatens to unravel their already toxic relationship.      

Most of the opening hour sees sulking, dejected Affleck as Vic almost sleepwalking through his wife's very public displays of infidelity. If an open marriage arrangement was made, he was either the last on Earth to find out or entirely uncomfortable with the ground rules. It turns out to be the latter, and whatever sympathy anyone could muster for him having to watch his wife throw herself at every man in town evaporates a lot faster than you'd expect. She's a handful for sure, fiery and and wildly unpredictable, but if he really cared that much he'd just leave, so a good portion of the film is spent waiting for him to explode. 

Her indifference to his anger is evident when she first brings home her "piano teacher," Charlie (Jacob Elordi) and then college ex Tony (Finn Wittrock), both of whom send Vic over the deep end. Leaving Melinda is too simple a solution and against his supposed principles, so if he can't have her all to himself, we can figure out the rest. When the film's major centerpiece incident occurs and nosy neighbor Don Wilson (Tracy Letts) becomes obsessed with proving Vic's a murderer, much to his wife Kelly's (Kristen Connolly) justifiable embarrassment.

While many have given Affleck a tough time for taking on troubled, middle-aged sad sack roles like this, he's really exceptional at it, especially here when given very little dialogue in the picture's first half, instead revealing most of Vic's inner plight through depressive body language and facial expressions. And after breaking through in Knives Out and outright stealing No Time to Die, this further extends Ana de Armas' streak as one of the most exciting actresses around. Bringing a wildly devious, frenetic energy to Melinda's every scene, de Armas is completely convincing as this woman entirely uninterested in being controlled by her husband or anyone else. You almost get the impression that Vic could kill not only half the men in this small town, but most of Louisiana, and Melinda still wouldn't run out of candidates to sleep with just because she can.

As absurd as the entire plot is at times, Lyne does really get a lot of little details right, like the social dynamic, as Vic and Melinda's friends look at their fractured marriage with both bewilderment and pity, at least when they're not partying. Watching, all we can think of is the adverse affect it's likely having on precocious daughter Trixie, who's stuck in the middle of this mess with two walking disasters for parents. 

Tracy Letts basically steals the show as the very suspicious Don, who's plagued by his unhealthy preoccupation with exposing Vic's potential guilt. It leads the story down a ridiculously compelling path, as he's good enough an actor to actually us that this pompous windbag of a character would take the dumb steps he does in the crazy last act. At the very least, it's no more far-fetched than believing Affleck as a retiree who amassed his great wealth from building guidance chips for drones, a detail that results in a lively political argument.  

That a long gestating project completed years ago was earmarked for a theatrical rollout before heading to Hulu shouldn't be taken as a damning indictment on its quality, especially since such a fate is commonplace now for mid-level adult dramas. If nothing else, it contains one of the more insane vehicular chase scenes in recent memory, featuring some extreme mountain biking and an important public service warning for anyone still on the fence about that whole texting while driving issue.  

That this is actually based on a 1957 Patricia Highsmith novel seems almost impossible to believe given how jarringly modern its story and setting feels. Having not read the book and going strictly by its synopsis, Zach Helm and Sam Levinson's screenplay doesn't seem to veer far from the source plot-wise, aside from a wacky ending. In this sense, Lyne deserve a lot of credit for updating the material to fit the type of 90's erotic thriller Deep Water is clearly being patterned after. While mileage may vary as to how successfully viewers think this was captured, it still harnesses something in that realm with more entertaining flare than expected.  

The Cabin in the Woods

Director: Drew Goddard
Starring: Kristen Connelly, Chris Hemsworth, Anna Hutchison, Fran Kranz, Jesse Williams, Richard Jenkins, Bradley Whitford, Brian White, Amy Acker
Running Time: 95 min.
Rating: R

★★ ½ (out of ★★★★)

Somehow, someway, I was able to avoid all spoilers before seeing the supposedly genre bending horror curiosity The Cabin in the Woods, which was released to some surprising critical acclaim a few months ago. Now after actually viewing it, I'm forced to ask: "Spoil what?" Granted the plot does take a major meta plot u-turn in the last half hour, but it's mostly a conventional horror movie wrapped around a gimmick that at times seems forced and self-congratulatory. Produced and co-written by Joss Whedon and directed by his former Buffy collaborator Drew Goddard, this isn't a game-changer. It doesn't subvert the genre. If anything, it's too ambitious for its own good, going to great lengths to deliver a supposedly high-concept horror entry that thinks it has a lot to say when it's just really kind of a mess. No worries about spoilers here since I couldn't explain the direction this goes in if I tried, and like the film, it would feel like a lot of work for little pay off. It's hard to actually blame audiences for staying away as its one thing to release a fun, dumb slasher but quite another to pretend it's a deep, existential commentary on how we watch horror movies. But at least commend the filmmakers for attempting something different and ambitious, even if the final result is the same as usual, with just a little sci-fi thrown in for flavor.

When college students Dana (Kristen Connolly), Curt (Chris Hemsworth), Jules (Anna Hutchison), Holden (Jesse Williams) and Marty (Fran Kranz) decide to take a weekend vacation at Curt's cousin's remote cabin somewhere in the woods, the trip starts going terribly wrong. All four characters can be given one word horror descriptors such as Virgin, Jock, Slut, Brain and Stoner, although the film's biggest accomplishment is in making those stereotypes serve a purpose and actually mean something to the narrative. Well, kind of. It isn't long after they arrive that they see and hear strange things, a family of redneck zombies are summoned from the grave and we have at least what appears to be at first your run-of-the-mill slasher. And for the most part, it is. But there's a twist. We find out early that these five have actually been placed in some kind of controlled  situation run by Gary Sitterson (Richard Jenkins) and Steve Hadley (Bradley Whitford), trained technicians who are not only manipulating this horror environment from the control room, but influencing the kids' actions to achieve a desired outcome for their unseen boss. While Gary and Steve bet on the results and celebrate gory deaths, the film cuts back and forth between the control room and cabin as the five fight to survive and the purpose of the operation begins to reveal itself.

It's an interesting decision to reveal early on that all these would be victims are actually subjects being filmed in some kind of twisted horror Truman Show, leaving the big revelation in the how and the why. What's most disappointing about this approach isn't the actual idea but how these technicians overseeing the action aren't depicted as even the slightest bit creative, trotting out the same horror tropes we've been watching on screen for the past twenty years. Sure, they're laughing along with us, but how does that make the actual execution of it any less tired?  Luckily, Jenkins and Whitford are a riot in their roles and their jokes help carry a crazy, convoluted premise that turns out to be more trouble than its worth. The last 40 minutes you're either on board with or you're not, as the only thing that is predictable is that these kids won't go down without a fight and the masterminds behind the project will have to dramatically change course to get the job done. I not only found the big revelation at the end (featuring a cameo by a big name actress) silly, but a dealbreaker considering Whedon and Goddard painted themselves into a corner by having the whole story rest on it. None of the performances are anything to write home about, though that hardly matters given how little is asked of them. Besides Jenkins and Whitford, only Fran Kranz makes a significant impression as stoner Marty, gobbling up the film's best one-liners. A pre-Thor Chris Hemsworth shows few signs he would be that strong screen presence down the road, while Kristen Connolly is bland enough as the protagonist that I actually had problems rooting for her.

Whenever you see Joss Whedon's name attached to a project it's only natural for fans to expect greatness. Not being overly familiar with his other work, I wasn't. And yet this still feels like a big let down. It's exciting whenever the horror genre goes in a new direction, but this only feels like a slight deviation. At the end of the day, it doesn't differ much from the usual slashers we're bombarded with and at points, it's even a little worse. Just because a movie is self-referential doesn't make it groundbreaking. A similar premise involving a mysterious project was well presented a few years ago in The Box and everyone inexplicably seemed to think it was the worst thing they've ever seen. But that was hard sci-fi with ideas. The Cabin in the Woods feels more like an inside joke for horror fans. Despite being nonsensical, there's no denying it has its moments and is skillfully directed, but the generic script fails its audience by promising a fresh spin that never comes.