Do Not Watch ‘Deep Water’ On Hulu, As Appealing As It May Look

Look, pitch me Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas in an erotic murder thriller and you’ve got my attention at baseline. But trust me, Deep Water is not worth wading into, and I think you’re going to regret doing so by the end. Or the middle. Or within the first 20 minutes once you understand what’s going on in this movie.

A Hulu original movie based on a Patricia Highsmith book, Deep Water seems like it has the potential to go some interesting places. Instead, it’s full of deeply unlikable characters with baffling motivations in an erotic “game” that is too twisted for its own good to the point where little about the movie makes any actual sense.

Spoilers follow.

Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas play a married couple who have agreed to an “open relationship” and by that it means that de Armas can openly carry on affairs and Affleck just sits around looking very grim about it. So grim, in fact, that eventually Affleck starts killing off her younger lovers in very obvious ways to the point where even his own daughter is questioning him about being a murderer, a fact that neither of them seem terribly concerned about.

I would argue that Ana de Armas is one of the most charming actors in Hollywood right now, but the way Deep Water designs her character, she is absolutely intolerable. It’s not just that she’s having affairs, it’s that she flaunts these escapades at parties, in front of their friends, brings the men back to her own house she shares with Affleck. It just comes off as goofy, like a completely implausible concept for a relationship as it’s never clear why the two even bother end up staying together, much less attempting to raise a child together as all this is going on right in front of her eyes.

The whole idea that Affleck isn’t jealous of his wife’s escapades clearly is not the case once he starts going on a murder spree. In the course of about 20 minutes, de Armas goes from screaming at the cops that Affleck killed her last boyfriend to saying that she’s not scared of him because he killed for her. What? What are you even saying right now?

The film culminates in one of the more absurd sequences I’ve seen in the last year across all of film, where Affleck chases a man through the woods on a bike when the guy is in a car, having just witnessed him dispose of a body. The man fumbles his phone as he tries to text his wife Affleck is a murderer (including a fun line about autocorrect), and naturally he drives off a cliff, so Affleck’s secret is safe. Good lord.

This is just…an absurd movie on absolutely every level, and I actively dislike it given what a terrible character was given to Ana de Armas, who deserves much better parts than this. There’s a reason the movie is getting roasted by critics and fans alike, and I would avoid it at all costs, even if the base concept seems at least initially appealing.

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