Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Deep Water’ on Hulu, An Erotic Thriller in Which Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas Go At It All the Time

This week in Lifesize Cardboard Cutouts of Ana de Armas in Ben Affleck’s Garbage is Deep Water, a Hulu exclusive from erotic thriller virtuoso Adrian Lyne, director of Fatal Attraction, Indecent Proposal and 9½ Weeks. Lyne hasn’t made a film since 2002’s Unfaithful, and hoo boy, his return sure is something. Something insane, or terrible, or both. The adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel stars former real-life couple Affleck and de Armas as a Lockhorns married couple, if Leroy was a cuck. She likes to take on additional lovers, and he’s a snail farmer with a real LOOK on his mug. Sound like trouble? Totally.

DEEP WATER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: OK, so Vic (Affleck) isn’t strictly a snail farmer – more like a snail hobbyist. It’s one of things he does since retiring young, having invented some tech for military murder drones, and capitalizing heavily on it. Sometimes, letting the snails crawl around on his fingers calms him, and sometimes, he seems to stare at them like the deeply unintelligent wads of carbon they are. He also likes to ride his bike and seethe about his marriage to Melinda (de Armas), which has taken a turn. He doesn’t want a divorce, and as part of their agreement to stay together, she’s allowed to shpldoink other men. These are the type of people who a Real Piece of Work would look at and say, “These are Real Pieces of Work.” They have a kid, a little girl, and my advice to her is, watch the Drew Barrymore movie Irreconcilable Differences, and take notes.

Vic and Melinda’s life consists of being shitty to each other, going to parties, paying the babysitter and being mad that Melinda’s sloshed again. While she’s out horndogging it with young pianists and the like, Vic publishes a photography magazine and/or goes ’round back to his misty hidey-hole and watches his snails f—. One night, he’s forced to make lobster bisque for one of the Other Men, and Vic says to the poor doofus, hey, you know the last guy Melinda dated? I killed him. Is Vic joking or bluffing or what? Good question. Ask the magic 8-ball. Should you trust a man who raises snails?

Their idle-rich existence cycles from party to party, from one of Melinda’s BFs to the next, from one bitter and vitriolic fight that ends with our anti-protagonists sleeping in separate beds to the occasional bitter and vitriolic fight that ends with our anti-protagonists lustily humping. Many hateful things are said; get used to it. So is Vic turned on by his wife’s insatiable libido and her lust for other men, or what? Maybe he used to be, but he seems to be getting more and more angry as this plot churns and churns and churns its butter. Did he really kill that guy? Like really? Kill kill him? Lookit his face – we get lots of opportunities to do so. He kinda seems capable of it. And this character played by Tracy Letts sure thinks so. Don’t underestimate the Tracy Letts character. He sold a couple of screenplays! Hopefully they were better than this bullshit.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Gigli. Definitely Gigli.

Performance Worth Watching: Ana de Armas is one of the best in the business (see Blade Runner 2049 and Knives Out), but her character is a void. She’s stuck playing a cardboard cutout (I went there, no choice, had to) minx whose motivation remains opaque all the way to the silly, silly end of this thing.

Memorable Dialogue: “The snails aren’t for eating.” – Future Affleck Meme

Sex and Skin: Scads of it. De Armas routinely falls out of her clothes and drags her orifices across male cast members. Meanwhile, Affleck is always wearing a shirt.

Our Take: There are times when a couple on the rocks tongue-lashing each other can reach Shakespearean proportions, e.g., Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton going at it in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. But more often it’s miserable, e.g., Affleck – in Gone Girl nastymouth mode but meaner and with a constant look of tortured suffering on his face, possibly because he knows this material is rubbish, which we see in so many snicker-worthy close-ups – and de Armas tongue-lashing each other with no foundation to their characters’ relationship. It’s just angst without direction or reason, and I think the subtext is lining the snail terrariums.

As for the sexy stuff, it plays like a dull homage to Lyne’s past work. I have no affinity for his preposterous soap-opera genital-mashfests; give me Lust, Caution or skeevy de Palma any day over the hysterical mania of Fatal Attraction. Maybe with all of Deep Water’s many scenes of attractive, irritating 40ish jerkoffs partying like college-age oafs, Lyne is taking aim at well-moneyed do-nothings, but he lands not a single satirical blow. Tonally, it’s barely dramatic and not comedic, unless you’ve seen all the memes of Affleck looking defeated, and watching him in this movie, we perhaps better understand why he might be feeling that way.

Deep Water makes dreck look like crapola. Lyne keeps the pot simmering and simmering and then we look in the pot and it’s empty. The dialogue is loaded with spurious double-entendres until it just becomes people shouting hateful and/or moronic things at each other. And the ending? Woof. If only the rest of the movie was as goddamn funny as its final 20 minutes, you might have a joyful trot through Campville. Truth is, it might just give you the trots.

Our Call: Snail fodder. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.