- The long-delayed erotic thriller "Deep Water" premiered on Hulu on Friday, March 18.
- Based on Patricia Highsmith's novel, it stars Ana de Armas and Ben Affleck as a couple who have fallen out of love.
- Insider has rounded up the most baffling and awkward moments and plot points in "Deep Water."
Warning: This post contains spoilers for "Deep Water."
The water in "Deep Water" is not deep enough.
You'd think that a film called "Deep Water" would shoot somewhere like a vast, gorgeous lake or a plunging waterfall. The water in "Deep Water" is just too shallow. Any body of water where you can see the basin is simply not deep enough.
When Vic Van Allen gets into the water, it barely goes above his chest.
Affleck is approximately six feet, four inches tall, therefore the water in "Deep Water" likely measures somewhere under six feet.
Again, I'm no water expert, but for a film titled "Deep Water," this definitely doesn't meet the brief.
In fact, the water is so shallow, Vic can't even successfully conceal a body within its depths.
Ultimately, the shallowness of the water leads to Vic's downfall, when the body of Tony (Finn Wittrock) is discovered. You could probably find some thematic significance to this but it just continues to beg the question why "Deep Water" filmed in such a shallow river.
There are, for some reason, lots of snails.
Vic owns an entire room full of snails, because why not?
It's never really explained and so, in an erotic thriller with remarkably few sex scenes, one of the most intimate moments is between Vic... and his snails.
Affleck committed to the role of snail owner and received praise from the film's onset snail handler, Max Anton, who told Entertainment Weekly: "Ben was fantastic to work with. He's a great listener. And you can tell that when he does his scenes, he will take instructions."
"He understands them, and usually, he can nail it the first time. He was exceptionally good with my animals. We didn't lose a single one," Anton added.
Director Adrian Lyne tries to generate meaningful imagery out of the snails too.
At one point, Lyne cuts between a snail being given a bath by Vic and Melinda giving her lover, Charlie, a hand job. It's really bizarre viewing.
The closest explanation for the snails comes from snail handler Anton, seemingly one of the only people involved in this film to do press for it. He told Entertainment Weekly that the snails are "a foil for Ben and Ana's characters."
"Even these dumb animals, these very simple animals, without even really brains, as you know, by definition, exhibited the kind of love and fidelity that these humans were seemingly incapable of," he said.
"Deep Water" is full of unintentional — or possibly intentional? — comedy.
After Charlie is drowned by Vic off-screen, he is accidentally dropped back into the pool. It's an unintentionally hilarious moment at a pivotal point in "Deep Water" that undermines any dramatic tension Lyne has built up.
It doesn't help that everyone is high on weed brownies when Charlie dies. Once again, it's another strange detail in a disjointed film comprised of strange details.
The moment Don Wilson (Tracy Letts) almost comically struggles up a sandy slope during the film's dramatic finale.
It's important to remember that Letts is, amongst other things, a two-time Tony Award winner and also a Pulitzer Prize winner.
Letts wrote "August: Osage County" and won a Tony for his performance in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" Suffice to say, "Deep Water" is far from Letts' finest hour.
The entire climactic chase sequence is just ridiculous.
When Don attempts to drive away from Vic, who is riding a mountain bike, he does not seem to consider the fact he's in a car and virtually untouchable.
The entire chase scene is completely nonsensical — Don drives recklessly for plot purposes only. His death is pure convenience and doesn't even appear in the Patricia Highsmith novel "Deep Water" is based on.
In Highsmith's original work, after discovering Vic is a murderer, Don contacts the police and has him arrested.
Instead, the film adaptation of "Deep Water" ends with Don erratically driving off a cliff and allowing Vic and Melinda to continue their lives free from suspicion.
Don deciding to text while frantically driving away from Vic is unbelievably baffling.
Putting aside that "I was right" is an incredibly vague statement to text upon discovering someone concealing a dead body in a river, surely a phone call would have been easier?
And Don probably wouldn't have careened off a cliff if he had made a call instead.
Autocorrect somehow manages to save the day for Vic and Melinda.
It's easy to sympathize with Don here — autocorrect really is the worst — but why would your first priority be accurate spelling and not the narrow road you're driving on or the murderer frantically pursuing you?
Don's car crashing into the river gave us concrete evidence that the water in "Deep Water" is really not very deep.
If it barely comes up to Affleck's chest and can't even submerge a car, then unfortunately, your water is simply not deep enough.
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