Review: 'Deep Water' is an unhinged erotic thriller where Ben Affleck lurks in fascinating ways

The overheated erotic thriller “Deep Water” confirms something that’s been in the back of my mind for awhile: Ben Affleck is a really good actor who gives some truly weird performances — and his work here is one of the stranger ones.

Affleck stars as Vic Van Allen, a tech genius who’s retired off the obscene wealth he made designing a guidance system for military drones. He spends most of his time cycling through his well-to-do town and the nearby woods, editing a vanity literary magazine, raising snails in his garage, and keeping an eye on his wife, Melinda (Ana de Armas).

What does Melinda do? Nearly every younger man who comes within flirting distance. This often happens at neighborhood parties, in full view of all of the Val Allens’ friends — and of Vic himself. Vic’s friends (Lil Rey Howery and Dash Mihok) tell Vic, for his own good, that they feel embarrassed for him watching Melinda cavorting with other guys.

Vic and Melinda, it appears, have an arrangement in which she can fool around with other guys, as long as she doesn’t abandon Vic and their six-year-old daughter, Trixie (Grace Jenkins). There are limits, though — as one young beau, Joel (Brendan C. Miller) discovers when Vic mentions a friend of Melinda’s who went missing. Vic tells Joel that he murdered this friend — a story that family friends read as a twisted joke, but Joel takes seriously enough to steer clear of Melinda.

Someone else takes the joke seriously. That’s Don Wilson (Tracy Letts), a newcomer to town, a TV writer who fancies himself a detective novelist. Don starts piecing things together — especially after a different guy (Jacob Elordi) drowns at a pool party, when Vic was the last guy to see him alive.

Director Adrian Lyne used to make his bones with sexually charged thrillers like this — his deep resume includes “Fatal Attraction,” “Indecent Proposal” and 2002’s “Unfaithful,” the last movie he made for 20 years, until now. Lyne’s fastball isn’t what it used to be, but he still knows how to handle the curve, or rather curves, as he captures de Armas (“Knives Out”) as a character with few qualms about getting naked in front of her seemingly unfeeling husband. Lyne also generates some erotic frisson in the scenes between Affleck and de Armas (this was filmed back when the two were dating), whether they’re having sex or avoiding it.

In adapting the novel by Patricia HIghsmith (“The Talented Mr. Ripley”), screenwriters Zach Helm (“Stranger than Fiction”) and Sam Levinson (who created HBO’s “Euphoria”) achieve a certain twisted tension, as Lyne follows Affleck’s Vic through his daily routine — leaving viewers to guess what’s sinister and what’s just mundane. Affleck’s passive facial expressions make the mystery even more inscrutable.

It’s a shame, after all the work at building this strange tension, that the last 10 minutes are bungled in almost comical fashion. What was intensely watchable, through Affleck’s brooding and de Armas’ raw sexuality, becomes unmissable as an example of a movie where the wheels come off in the final chapter.

——

‘Deep Water’

★★★

Starts streaming Friday, March 18, 2022, on Hulu. Rated R for sexual content, nudity, language and some violence. Running time: 116 minutes.