On this week’s Screening Room Podcast, Hope & George look at the new releases: The Devil Wears Prada 2, Hokum, Deep Water, Animal Farm, Swapped, Heresy, Salt Along the Tongue, and Didn’t Die. PLUS! The Schlocketeer Daniel Baldwin joins us with movie news & notes!
by George Wolf
It isn’t too long before counting all the borrowed ideas becomes the most fun Deep Water is offering.
It’s a shark movie, so…Jaws. But you’ll also spot Titanic, the Airport franchise, The Shallows, Train to Busan, The Perfect Storm and a good bit of The Poseidon Adventure.
At least they acknowledge that last one with a Shelly Winters wisecrack, and it’s welcome. Because for a film that seems to think it’s farther above a Sharknado sequel than it ends up being, a bit of self awareness is long overdue.
First, director Renny Harlin has to get us on a plane to Shanghai, so the team of six screenwriters (six!) runs us through a some broadly-drawn Airport style intros of passengers and crew.
In the cockpit we meet the rugged First Officer with personal demons (Aaron Eckhart), the veteran Captain with scalawag charm (Sir Ben Kingsley), and the patient flight attendants (Lucy Barrett, Chrissy Jin). On the passenger list we have the asshole (Angus Sampson), the idiot parents looking to join the Mile High Club (Kelly Gale and Ryan Bown), kids in peril (Molly Belle Wright and Elijah Tamati), the Shelly Winters (Kate Fitzpatrick) and two twentysomething dudes who almost throw hands early on (might they be forced to put aside petty differences and work together??)
The plane crashes into the sea, and the placement of the two main chunks of wreckage allows Harlin to execute some Poseidon-esque set pieces in between shark attacks. Those sharks are CGI, of course, and their ridiculous gymnastics make you long for the true tension of a mechanical maneater that often broke down.
Nothing here is the least bit scary, the writing is obvious and overwrought, and the entire tone is caught awkwardly between giving in to sharksploitation silliness and striving for a well-plotted thriller.
Only Kingsley seems to know which end of the pool Deep Water belongs in. Too bad nobody else let the Cap’n make something fun happen with all these remnants of better movies..
by George Wolf
Adrian Lyne hasn’t directed a movie in twenty years. It’s been twice that long since the 1957 source novel by Patricia Highsmith (Strangers on a Train, The Talented Mr. Ripley) has been adapted for the big screen.
They’re both back with a new vision for Deep Water, a sometimes frustrating erotic thriller that can never fully capitalize on all of its possibilities to be either erotic or thrilling.
Vic and Melinda Van Allen (Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas) are living a life of luxury in New Orleans with their young daughter Trixie (the incredibly cute Grace Jenkins). Vic developed a computer chip used for drone warfare, so his days of early retirement are mainly filled with watching Melinda openly flaunt her affairs at parties.
When one of Melinda’s past lovers turns up dead, Vic lets her latest boy toy (Brendan Miller) know that he’s the murderer. But Vic is only trying to scare the kid away, right? Neighbor Don (Tracy Letts with another standout supporting turn) is suspicious early on, and when another of Melinda’s lovers (Euphoria‘s Jacob Elordi) drowns at a pool party, plenty of others are looking at Vic as the prime suspect.
Screenwriters Zach Helm and Sam Levinson provide Lyne with undercurrents of subtext that are never fully explored. We assume Vic doesn’t want to subject Trixie or his finances to a messy divorce, but the deeper we dig, it’s clear this marital arrangement is feeding some need for both parties and fostering a concerning worldview for their child. Lyne showcases the aimless privilege of their daily lives to hint at a lesson on the rot of wealth, then pivots, often to Vic’s creepy but uneventful hobby of raising snails.
And though Lyne has made his name on the steamy sexual politics of 9 1/2 Weeks, Fatal Attraction and Unfaithful, there’s more smoke here than fire. And water, water everywhere.
You won’t notice grand chemistry between Affleck and de Armas, which is a credit to both. This is a marriage of psychological warfare, and it is Vic and Melinda’s contrasting plans of attack that keep us invested, especially in the early going. De Armas embodies the cruelly uninhibited as well as Affleck brings the condescending and calculated, which is a major reason the major twist to Highsmith’s original ending works as well as it does.
For these two, it feels right.
But only for a moment, because strangely, Lyne doesn’t let it linger. Instead, he quickly cuts from the credits to a performance from the adorable Jenkins singing along to a cheery pop ditty from the 1970s.
If it’s an attempt at chilling humor, it falls hard, becoming another anchor weighing down Deep Water just when it starts cruising.
