Streaming fans pleasure themselves with a laughably bad erotic thriller

Once upon a time, Adrian Lyne was the undisputed ruler of the blockbuster erotic thriller, after helming 9½ Weeks, Fatal Attraction, Indecent Proposal, and Unfaithful. The latter would lead to a 20-year sabbatical, but when he returned with Deep Water, the reactions were that of unintentional hilarity above anything else.

Thanks to the pandemic, co-stars and former real-life couple Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas had long since parted ways by the time Deep Water finally arrived on Hulu and Prime Video (depending on where you live) in March of this year, with production having initially kicked off in November 2019 before the COVID-era release date domino effect kicked in.

Brash, trashy, and completely unaware of how ridiculous it is, Lyne’s return to the filmmaking fold ironically caught fire with at-home audiences who found themselves completely bemused by what they found. There’s murder, mystery, intrigue, wild plot developments, jarring tonal shifts, surprisingly sexless sex scenes, and even an ending that left almost everyone scratching their heads, which in turn has made Deep Water perfect entertainment for the gathered masses.

As per FlixPatrol, the maligned exercise in ice-cold eroticism has jumped by 59 places on the Prime Video most-watched chart overnight, to currently rank as the 12th-top title on the platform heading into the weekend. For whatever reason, it would appear that subscribers in countless countries have all decided at roughly the same time that they want to either revisit or investigate one of the year’s most notable examples of cinematic what-the-f*ckery.