‘Deep Water’ Review: Ben Affleck Goes From Cuckold to Killer in Adrian Lyne’s Slick, Hard-to-Swallow Thriller

variety.com:

Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticThere’s something missing from Adrian Lyne’s “Deep Water,” and it’s not just the body of Martin McRae, the last unfortunate rival to get a little too friendly with Vic Van Allen’s wife.

Vic (Ben Affleck) and Melinda (Ana de Armas) have an open marriage, but her … distractions have a habit of disappearing, and so do pretty much all ties to recognizable human behavior in the “Fatal Attaction” director’s unexpectedly cool-headed adaptation of the 1957 Patricia Highsmith novel for Hulu.

This erotic thriller is still sexy and plenty entertaining, mind you, but it’s just not very useful insofar as what it says about real relationships.Late last century, Lyne had a long, successful run of portraying complex sexual dynamics through grown-up eyes, but it’s been 20 years since “Unfaithful” — two decades he spent fighting to get this film off the ground — and the now-octogenarian helmer’s influence on subsequent sizzlers has undermined his own capacity to shock.

Films like “Gone Girl” and “Fifty Shades of Grey” are nothing if not knockoffs of the classic Lyne aesthetic (which treats sex more seriously than its softcore competition), pushing the envelope farther than the director is willing to go with this particular project.