Ben Affleck's new movie is helping to bring sexy back.
When did Hollywood get so prudish?
Sure, the 50 Shades franchise made some serious bank, but for a trilogy of movies about sex and S&M and stuff, it was curiously chaste.
We've been over this before, wondering why the erotic thriller genre seemed to die out entirely in the mid-90s, but we're very happy to report that it looks like it could be making a comeback, and thanks primarily to the guy who helped popularise the genre in the first place.
Adrian Lyne directed 9½ Weeks (Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger play sex games that begin to get very complicated), Fatal Attraction (Glenn Close has an affair with Michael Douglas, proceeds to go nuts), and Indecent Proposal (Robert Redford pays $1 million for one night with Demi Moore, which drives her husband Woody Harrelson nuts).
Lyne's last movie, 2002's Unfaithful, was (you guessed it!) an erotic thriller, with Diane Lane cheating on her husband Richard Gere with a hot French dude, and it all goes awry. Lane ended with an Best Actress Oscar nomination, which would make you think that the genre was finally being taken seriously.
Except it was pretty much the last good example of an erotic thriller, and Lyne pretty much stopped working entirely... until now.
Deep Water stars Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas (Blade Runner 2049, Knock Knock) as a couple who avoid divorce by allowing each other to take part in extramarital affairs, but Affleck becomes the prime suspect when a number of de Armas' sexual partners begin turning up dead.
It has all the twisty-turny plot makings of being this generation's Basic Instinct, and considering Affleck and de Armas have got somewhat nekkid for movies before, there is no reason to assume they won't do so here.
The script is adapted from a Patricia Highsmith novel (The Talented Mister Ripley) by Zack Helm (Stranger Than Fiction) and Sam Levison (HBO's Euphoria), and is produced by Oscar-winning producers Arnon Milchan (The Revenant, L.A. Confidential) and Steve Zallian (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, American Gangster).
So... there is some actual, properly impressive talent behind this project.
We're trying to remain calm, but it really does look like the erotic thriller could be returning to multiplexes, and we couldn't be happier!
We should expect to see Deep Water in Irish cinemas towards the end of 2020.
