Deep Water

This movie is a cautionary tale, and the problem is not the overheated sex.

But I also want you to think hard about your own friend group, and the position you and your partner occupy within it. If you’ve ever been at a gathering where a celebrity unexpectedly showed up, you’ve experienced the way that the attention of every single person turns to them, as if they are a magnet and you all are mere iron filings quivering in the famous person’s field. When a couple sucks up all the oxygen in a friend group, it’s no wonder everyone else gets a little light-headed! Later at the same party, Vic threatens the bohunk, news of which soon spreads to the whole friend group. But at every one of those parties, those poor friends have to deal with Vic (Affleck) and Melinda (de Armas). We first meet all these fine folks at one such party, where Mary (Devyn A. Tyler) tells a withdrawn Vic that “a few of us are concerned” about the way Melinda is all over the blond, single bohunk in their midst. One of them is flirting and the other is sulking, and she’s feeling up some guy on the dance floor.

Check out this guide for all the details on how to watch Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas' erotic thriller 'Deep Water'.

Deep Water is a Hulu exclusive in the US so the only way you can watch it in the country is on the streaming service. And to be fair, it's probably better that you watch this movie in a more intimate setting. And if you like the experience, there's a whole lot of great content on the service that you could check out. Starring Robert Redford, Demi Moore, and Woody Harrelson, the film explores the story of a married couple whose lives are turned upside down after a billionaire offers them a million dollars to spend the night with the wife. Remember how I said the film was supposed to be released in 2020? Soon, it was announced that Deep Water would move to a streaming-only release and the release date was announced on Valentine's Day 2022. As stated above, Deep Water is a Hulu exclusive so you can't watch it in theaters. In the US, Deep Water was released on Hulu on March 18, 2022. As mentioned above, the movie has been released internationally on Amazon Prime Video so if you're outside the US, you can watch Deep Water on that service instead. Deep Water is an erotic thriller, extra emphasis on the "thriller" part. The movie is centered around a married couple in a loveless relationship who engage in a dangerous game to keep their marriage together. What's the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word "erotic"? Slow jazz?

Look, pitch me Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas in an erotic murder thriller and you've got my attention at baseline. But trust me, Deep Water is not worth ...

The film culminates in one of the more absurd sequences I’ve seen in the last year across all of film, where Affleck chases a man through the woods on a bike when the guy is in a car, having just witnessed him dispose of a body. The whole idea that Affleck isn’t jealous of his wife’s escapades clearly is not the case once he starts going on a murder spree. So grim, in fact, that eventually Affleck starts killing off her younger lovers in very obvious ways to the point where even his own daughter is questioning him about being a murderer, a fact that neither of them seem terribly concerned about.

“Deep Water,” the new erotic thriller starring Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas, is finally on Hulu after a series of missed theatrical release dates.

Back at the river, Vic scrambles up the embankment, gets on his bike (he bikes a lot, as most multimillionaire psychopaths do), and crashes his bike in front of Don’s car. Vic and Melinda bring Trixie out for a picnic near where he offed Tony. Looking out into the water, he notices the body bobbing just below the surface and makes a mental note to return and shove that dude further below the waves. Matilda says that she talked to Tony. The last shot of the movie is her burning his wallet. Anyway, Melinda starts to take up with another man, this one named Charlie and played by “Euphoria” hunk Jacob Elordi. (Probably worth mentioning that “Euphoria” creator/mastermind Sam Levinson co-wrote the screenplay.) She flaunts this relationship even more openly than the previous relationship and gives him thousands of (Vic’s) dollars to give her “piano lessons.” She invites him to a pool party that one of their friends (Dash Mihok) is throwing. He comes over to the house, there is some very terse conversation and some inappropriate behavior by Melinda (of course). But he claims that he’s innocent and the local cops give him a pass, undoubtedly because he is a rich white man. (The movie never definitively states whether Vic killed the guy he makes reference to; later they do find his body but he was murdered in a way that was dissimilar to what Vic described.) She’s got the bedroom all to herself and she’s a complete slob. When he talks about his job to a local writer named Don, played by the great Tracy Letts, he gets a quizzical look.) His wife Melinda (and mother to their young child Trixie) just hangs out all day, getting into flirtatious and occasionally sexual relationships with men in town. In broad strokes, “Deep Water,” based on a novel of the same name by “The Talented Mr. Ripley” author Patricia Highsmith, centers on the marriage of Vic Van Allen (Affleck) and his much younger wife Melinda (de Armas). He made an ungodly amount of money designing microchips that allow for drone technology to work. Since this is a squarish Southern town (Little Wesley, Louisiana), word gets around and people start to talk about Vic and his wife’s relationship and what he is willing to do to protect it. The first film in 20 years from British provocateur Adrian Lyne (“Flashdance,” “Unfaithful,” “Indecent Proposal”), is very much worth your time – an exploration of the dynamics of marriage as much as a tense, white-knuckle thriller.

It's really a vicious piece of work, a movie made by a filmmaker who is unafraid to see the primal, darker parts that beautiful people hide behind their ...

It’s really a vicious piece of work, a movie made by a filmmaker who is unafraid to see the primal, darker parts that beautiful people hide behind their gorgeous facades. We meet Vic Van Allen (Affleck) and his wife Melinda (Ana de Armas) deep in the misery of a failed partnership. The next day he claims that he is, but the basic machination of the script by Zach Helm (“Stranger Than Fiction”) and Sam Levinson (“Euphoria”) has been set in motion: Melinda cheats, and it’s possible that Vic kills the guys with whom Melinda cheats. Some corners of the internet have been anticipating this project as a return to “movies for adults,” a genre that has undeniably gone away in the studio production line now that almost every movie has to get a PG-13. And the fact that it’s the first film in two decades from the director of “Fatal Attraction” and “9 ½ Weeks” sets a standard for the film that might lead to disappointment. I’m eager to see a reportedly longer version because there’s a lot here that works, including a great Ben Affleck performance and the kind of sexual tension that Americans simply don’t offer in the 2020s. Based on the 1957 novel by Patricia Highsmith, the genius who also wrote Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley, which should give you some idea of the games being played here, “Deep Water” doesn’t waste time with the “happy days” of the Van Allen union.

A V.F. writer tries to make sense of Hulu's Deep Water, starring former couple Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas.

How were they to know that many of us would be tuning into Deep Water to catch a glimpse of the steamy chemistry between our favorite pandemic couple that no longer is (RIP BenAna), and maybe weren't as interested in seeing Ben Affleck bike through a forest while de Armas sort of sadly packs a suitcase? The scene is very similar, but not exactly the same, as the one which opens the film, in which Vic bikes home and takes off his pants on the porch before entering the house (remember, it's an erotic thriller). At the end of the movie, Vic keeps his pants on while Melinda says, “I saw Tony,” then proceeds to burn Tony's wallet and identification. While Lyne's film is quite similar to Highsmith's novel—down to keeping the somewhat antiquated names “Vic” and "Melinda" for its central couple—Deep Water quite literally veers into a completely different direction in its third act. While this is happening, Melinda realizes that Vic has murdered Tony and is packing a bag, presumably planning to leave him. Melinda engages in extra-marital affairs from time to time; Vic murders some of her lovers, undetected by the police but drawing suspicion from both Melinda and their neighbor, Don. Towards the end of the novel, Vic murders Melinda's latest lover, Tony, by throwing him off a cliff and hiding the body in a shallow river, weighing it down with rocks. A lot of fuss has been made over Adrian Lyne’s film adaptation of Deep Water, based on the novel by The Talented Mr. Ripley scribe Patricia Highsmith. (After a score of Covid-related delays, the movie finally debuted on Hulu today.) For one, Deep Water stars early-pandemic “it” couple Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas, who met during filming, fell in love, and briefly took over the internet with their matching jewelry and penchant for cardboard cut outs.

Is it OK to long for the days of the movie nymphomaniac? The woman who “just can't help herself” and thus becomes a magnet for both the desire and scorn of ...

(The script is by Zach Helm and Sam Levinson, adapted from a novel by Patricia Highsmith.) The did-he-or-didn’t-he question isn’t even the point; the movie is more fixated on inviting us to gawk at Melinda and Vic’s twisted mind games, and to wonder why he puts up with it as Melinda repeats her signature moves of giggling, pouting, and drinking wine lustily from whatever goblet is readily available. Meanwhile, she shuts him out of her bedroom—except once in a while, when she’s in the mood, generally instigated by Vic’s having acted out in a jealous rage, she allows him to stay. Until he doesn’t. But nothing happens in Deep Water that you don’t figure out in the first 30 minutes, and that seems to be by design. Then Vic threatens one of Melinda’s boy-toys by claiming, as a joke, that he killed one of her previous lovers. The woman who “just can’t help herself” and thus becomes a magnet for both the desire and scorn of men, and sometimes women? Is it OK to long for the days of the movie nymphomaniac?

Ana De Armas and Ben Affleck shine in "Deep Water," an erotic thriller directed by Adrian Lyne now streaming on Hulu.

If you can’t cut loose and let the inconsistencies go, however, “Deep Water” will be a certified belly flop. “Deep Water” is very much a hit-or-miss movie, with entire scenes in which characters act in a manner that defies expectation. “Deep Water,” the new movie streaming on Hulu starring onetime couple Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas, is a throwback to a bygone era.

No offense to this film, but I wish I was rewatching “Gone Girl.” All the ingredients are there: Ben Affleck, dark score, unhappy wife.

They get in a car chase, and the pretentious writer dies.Ana realizes Ben has been killing off all of her B.F.s and tries to leave, but her daughter very creepily stops her by throwing her bag in the pool.Okay, it seems Ana is going to stay with Ben and be his accomplice? What’s hard about this?There’s a guy missing in town, and Ben heavily implies to the blond man (ugh) that he killed him for having an affair with Ana. Yikes.Oh, wait, he just straight-up says, “I killed him.”Or is Ben Affleck just tall?Now why is Ana eating an apple in the car on the way home from the party? She doesn’t seem to care.Why are these people constantly at lawn parties?Really cute shot of a sleepy dog at an inopportune moment.I get that Ana is freewheeling and all, but does she have to hook up with her lovers while at lawn parties with her husband?If I were a person in this small town, I’d wonder why these weird married people were constantly bringing their drama to parties.Okay, the dead body is Jacob Elordi, and Ana naturally accuses her husband of his murder to the cops, as you do.Ben gaslights the hell out of Ana, but the weird pretentious writer from earlier believes her.Meanwhile, Ben is getting a little too cozy with his blonde wife, who looks familiar, but I don’t feel like IMDB-ing.The pretentious writer and Ana are teaming up with a P.I. to prove Ben is a murderer, and Ben calls him on it at a nice-looking lunch featuring several bottles of natural wine I want.Why are the daughters in this movie all named Goldie and Trixie? Mad Men again!Yet another lover of Ana’s (I assume?) comes through, this one her ex-boyfriend, and Ben...legit kills him?So they’re just getting right to it, huh?Things chill out for Ana and Ben after the murder (LOL), until the pretentious writer catches Ben messing with the ex-B.F.’s corpse. Some mom is appalled.OMG, Ana is sneaking off with an unseen blond person, and at this point I can’t determine their gender because I can’t see their face, so I’m choosing to believe this movie is queer for the moment.Ben talks to a woman with (to be crass) a great set about how he loves his wife, but clearly there’s trouble brewing.Ana is playing the piano and singing, in a true “Zou Bisou Bisou” moment.Never sing in public! They got a pet, which is always a good idea when you have a small child and your marriage is on the rocks.Ana taunts Ben about all her affairs, and he issues an ultimatum. Make a chore wheel!The word emasculate is being used a lot and not entirely correctly.Ben and Ana meet a pretentious writer at a party (Tracy Letts!), and we learn that Ben does...“web apps” and “publishes a small magazine” but mostly rides his bike around. He’s Ana’s latest prey, and he too plays the piano because we’re in a very musical town.I am incredibly bored and, to be honest, have no idea what’s going on in this movie. Personally, I consider it an honor and a privilege to share my thoughts about the film with the world on a minute-by-minute basis; read them all below.Did I confuse this with the Matt Damon film Stillwater? Maybe.Does Deep Water also sound like it could be the name of a bespoke Colorado-based river-rafting-guide company? Save this story for later.Note: This story contains spoilers for the 2022 film Deep Water.There were no bigger fans of Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas’s relationship than Vogue’s web staff, so when we learned that the pair’s “erotic psychological thriller” Deep Water (based on the novel of the same name by Patricia Highsmith, no less!) was finally dropping, we were immediately spellbound. Not to make gender assumptions, but he doesn’t care, girl.Ben and Ana are at a boring-looking house party, explaining that they let their six-year-old choose to go to public school. Yes.I must say, Affleck does look good in bike shorts.No offense to this film, but I wish I were rewatching Gone Girl. All the ingredients are there: Ben Affleck, dark score, unhappy wife.Why do wives persist in asking for their husbands’ opinions on their date-night oufits? Skip to main contentTo revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories57 Thoughts I Had While Watching Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas in Deep WaterSave this story for later.

In the 1990s and early 2000s the English director Adrian Lyne was one of the masters of the erotic thriller, the craftsman behind such suspenseful yet ...

And as was the case in Gone Girl, Affleck’s limited emotional palette serves him well; his Vic is a stolid, even passive endurer of indignities, which makes his rare flashes of temper all the more jarring. But then bad things start to happen to other men in Vic and Melinda’s social circle, making the motives and intentions of the central couple that much harder to untangle. When the missing person’s body is discovered and a probable suspect named, it seems clear the much-cuckolded Vic was only making a dark joke. The last third or so of Deep Water takes a swerve even farther from verisimilitude than the already not-that-believable storyline that preceded it. From Deep Water’s first scene, it’s clear Vic Van Allen (Ben Affleck) and his wife Melinda (Ana de Armas) share a kink so weird it puts bunny-boiling to shame. There’s a particular itch scratched by what might be called the domestic action movie: movies where an intimate physical relationship functions not as part of a romantic subplot, but as the main driver of the film’s suspense.

Seeing exes Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas on screen together will be an undeniable attraction (if not of the "Fatal" variety) for "Deep Water," but that ...

Adapted from the novel by Patricia Highsmith ("The Talented Mr. Ripley") and relegated to a low-key premiere on Hulu, the story hinges on the strange marriage between Vic (Affleck) and Melinda ("Knives Out's" de Armas), a picture-perfect couple that outwardly have everything, including his invention-earned wealth and their adorable young daughter.The two have reached an apparent understanding, however, that allows her to compensate for his indifference and emotional distance by taking lovers, an unhappily-ever-after dynamic that causes discomfort among their friends, with whom they regularly throw neighborhood parties, mostly due to her brazenness.As for Vic, he acts unperturbed by his wife's infidelity, but there's the little matter of Melinda's one-time "friend" who has gone missing, and lingering suspicions as to whether he had anything to do with that.Vic doesn't seek to quell those rumblings, underscoring the mind games that the couple plays not only with each other, but those around them. While the movie falls apart toward the end, the mystery -- and crackling central performances -- cruises along at a low boil much of the way. Seeing exes Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas on screen together will be an undeniable attraction (if not of the "Fatal" variety) for "Deep Water," but that shouldn't obscure the simple pleasures of this erotic thriller directed by Adrian Lyne, a crafty veteran of that genre.

The world has missed Adrian Lyne, the British director of erotically charged cinema like Fatal Attraction, Indecent Proposal, and 9½ Weeks.

It is almost painful to watch her bounce off the nearly asexual Vic; no wonder their bedroom life cascades into a terrifying game of murder and misery. It has big stars (Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas). It is unapologetically sexy and sexual, with all the uncomfortable hangups such material brings to the fore. A subplot involving a nosy neighbor trying to solve the mystery of the missing boyfriends is almost entirely superfluous since we more or less know everything that’s happening. Deep Water’s biggest flaw is that, for an erotic thriller, emphasis on the thriller, it’s all kind of obvious. Fatal Attraction (1987), Basic Instinct (1992), and Indecent Proposal (1993) were all massive hits, each landing in the top ten of their respective years. The world has missed Adrian Lyne, the British director of erotically charged cinema like Fatal Attraction, Indecent Proposal, and 9½ Weeks. Absent from the big screen since 2002’s Unfaithful, Lyne is a throwback to an earlier, better age, one in which he and Paul Verhoeven (Basic Instinct, Showgirls) were the kings of movies for adults that nudged up to the line of being adult movies.

The long-delayed "Deep Water" now has an awkward real-life twist, given that stars Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas dated and have since broken up, and Affleck ...

Although neither Affleck nor de Armas have given any indication they care about the reactions, it’s probably not the most pleasant experience to know that a major narrative of the movie is its potentially uncomfortable real-life implications, instead of the actual film. The Washington Post’s Michael O’Sullivan wrote that the film “is practically smoldering — with the sour-smelling smoke of a burning trash fire,” while the Associated Press went with “tedious and clunky.” The New York Times said “There’s surprisingly little sex, and what there is has none of the vividness and tactility Lyne is known for,” and the Hollywood Reporter (like quite a few others) invoked Affleck and de Armas’s relationship: “The primary usefulness of ‘Deep Water’ is as a record for celebrity chroniclers of the off-camera romance that made [Affleck and de Armas] a tabloid thing for a minute.” “There’s something wrong with me too,” Vic says, as the music grows louder and louder before the scene abruptly ends. A source told Page Six that de Armas just didn’t want to stay in Los Angeles full-time, where Affleck lives and shares custody of his three children with ex-wife Jennifer Garner. A few months later, Affleck was photographed spending time with Lopez, and social media lost its collective mind. This is not how things were supposed to go: “Deep Water” (co-written by “Euphoria” creator Sam Levinson and screenwriter Zach Helm) was announced to a decent amount of fanfare in August 2019, as it was the first film from director Adrian Lyne in nearly 20 years. The couple decided to quarantine together in Los Angeles and were constantly photographed doing the most mundane activities: Going on masked walks, taking their dogs out for a stroll, getting coffee.

Deep Water, a not so steamy erotic thriller starring Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas, and based on a Patricia Highsmith novel, is out now.

He proudly calls her brilliant, they let her decide where she wants to go to school even though she is only six, we see her experimenting with a potato battery by herself, and at one point Vic even lets his daughter have a glass of wine (even though Vic himself isn’t really a drinker, that’s Melinda’s thing). Trixie chats to him about the murder in the swimming pool, and although he initially denies it, she says she thinks he did it and doesn’t seem all that bothered. Stay to the very end of the credits and you get an additional gag: “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” plays. Early on Trixie is annoying her mother by getting Alexa to play “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” over and over (which doesn’t seem to bother Vic). Vic interacts with his daughter with warmth, although he talks to her as if she was an adult. So at the end of the film, just after the beat where we understand that murderous Vic and adulterous Melinda are forever stuck together, torturing each other and causing damage to those who are in their orbit, the credits play out to Trixie (Grace Jenkins) singing “You Make Me Feel Like Dancing” in the back of their car. Lucky for Vic that a shaken up Don is driving like a crazy person trying to get away from Vic (who is on a bike…) and crashes off the edge of a ravine swerving to avoid Vic. In the end, knowing he’s going to be taken to the police by Don, Vic goes home and strangles Melinda, before Don and a police officer arrive at the house. The film has an ending which is more reminiscent of Gone Girl, which also stars Affleck as a man suspected of murdering his wife. In the book, Melinda orchestrates a way for Don to discover evidence of Tony’s murder while Vic is checking Tony’s body (a bit like in the film), though Don doesn’t crash his car, he survives. But Melinda decides to burn the evidence she’s found and tells Vic she has seen Tony, which they both know is not true. We understand Malcolm is one of his wife’s former lovers, and Vic tells Joel, his wife’s latest squeeze, that he killed Malcolm with a hammer. There’s no way Tony’s death could be mistaken for an accident and Vic is even caught by Don when he’s trying to poke Tony’s body down into the water with a stick. It’s Vic himself who starts the rumor that he’s the killer and seems to rather enjoy the notoriety it brings him.

The snails that Ben Affleck's Vic breeds in the Hulu film 'Deep Water' aren't for eating, but they are a hallmark of author Patricia Highsmith's ...

Knoppert is drawn to how the snails “come together in a kiss of voluptuous intensity,” and Highsmith sketches Knoppert as a haughty man proud of his knowledge of the “sensuality” of the snails’ mating process. This portrait of Vic as a man driven primarily by loyalty and desire is supported by the film’s changed ending, which alters what Highsmith put on the page. And when both versions of Vic muse about how far snails will travel to find their partners (“Crossing garden walls,” he says in the book; “A snail will climb a 12-foot wall to find its mate,” Vic tells Don in the movie), what Vic is really alluding to are the things he’s willing to do to track down his wife. In Highsmith’s novel, Vic — like the author and like Knoppert — is fascinated by watching the snails mate, so much so that it has become his only hobby. In the film’s first garage scene, Lyne communicates without dialogue Vic’s observation from the book that “the snails still loved his hands, crawling slowly but unhesitatingly onto the forefinger that he extended to them.” In spending time with and even sleeping in the same room as the snails, Vic finds intimacy and tranquility that remind him of what he and Melinda once had. He has named the snails Edgar and Hortense; he believes they’re “genuinely in love”; and he’s frustrated by Melinda’s growing disinterest in them as her infidelity becomes more brazen (“You used to think snails were interesting and that a lot of other things were interesting, until your brain began to atrophy,” he says). The film adaptation of Deep Water doesn’t lift all these details, but the ones Helm and Levinson do choose are effectively used to honor Highsmith’s original intent for the character. The piece’s last line gives Clavering an end that is similar to Knoppert’s: “He was waist-deep when he stumbled, waist-deep but head under when the snail crashed down upon him, and he realized as the thousands of pairs of teeth began to gnaw at his back, that his fate was both to drown and to be chewed to death.” And in Beautiful Shadow, Wilson also describes a third story about snails that Highsmith considered writing, about “an apocalyptic, postnuclear world” in which humans returning to repopulate Earth have to battle mutated, carnivorous snails. They’re all over every visible surface, weighing down the room’s wallpaper and even forming a sort of chandelier hanging from the ceiling, and they trap him inside, overwhelm him by sliding all over his body and into his mouth, and consume him. During the film’s first scene in that garage, Lyne and cinematographer Eigil Bryld go from close-ups of the snails’ whirled exoskeletons and protruding tentacles to a close-up of Affleck’s eyes, gazing with what can only be described as affection at the snails sliding along his hand. None of Highsmith’s other major adapted works feature snails: not Strangers on a Train, The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Two Faces of January, or Carol. But Highsmith’s interest in snails goes back to her time at Barnard College, where she studied zoology for a year and “felt a strong tenderness for animals, particularly cats and snails, both of which she kept as pets,” writes Andrew Wilson in his biography Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith. The self-described “strange pastime” included observing and writing about the unique mating rituals of land snails, which are nearly all hermaphroditic. In Deep Water, the Patricia Highsmith adaptation from iconic erotic-thriller director Adrian Lyne and screenwriters Zach Helm and Sam Levinson, Ben Affleck’s Vic is a weird guy.