A long-delayed erotic thriller that would have been better off left on the shelf gets down and dirty on streaming

When you take a director like Adrian Lyne (who’d carved out a niche for being capable of delivering top-tier erotic thrillers) and then partner him up with a two-time Academy Award-winning A-lister and one of the fastest-rising stars in the industry – who also happened to be a real-life couple at the time – then expectations are inevitably raised. Sadly, Deep Water ended up firing nothing but blanks.

The unintentionally hilarious and preposterous movie took so long to arrive that by the time it was finally sent out into the wilderness of Hulu to die a slow and painful death, Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas had already gone their separate ways. To give you an inkling of how long the wait was, filming kicked off in November of 2019, but audiences didn’t get to see the end product until March of 2022.

Was the wait worth it? Based on a critical trashing and lukewarm viewership figures on the streaming service, it’s hard to say anything other than “no, absolutely not.” There’s some steaminess thrown in and plenty of gratuitous nudity, but the central plot loses its grip on reality awfully quickly, before lurching from one boneheaded twist to the next.

That being said, it should probably go without mentioning that any sort of titillating tale is destined to capture wandering eyes on-demand, with Deep Water being the latest to benefit from the never-ending lust of subscribers everywhere. Per FlixPatrol, the turgid tale has gone and conquered a platform outside of its home turf, with the sexless sex-crazed story being welcomed with open arms and legs onto the Prime Video Top 10 in 31 countries around the world.