Fatal Attraction (1987)
Directed by Adrian Lyne
Written by James Dearden
Starring Michael Douglas, Glenn Close, Anne Archer
Release Date September 18th, 1987
Published September 17th, 2017
Fatal Attraction stars Michael Douglas as a seemingly happy husband to Ann Archer and father to an adorable 6-year-old daughter. So why, if he’s so happy, does he decide to cheat on his wife? This questions comes to consume the mind of Alex (Glenn Close), the woman Douglas’ Dan decides to sleep with one night while his wife and daughter are away visiting family in the suburbs. Alex can’t understand why Dan would choose to sleep with her and then retreat back to his marriage.
That Alex is also mentally unbalanced does not help matters. Moments after Dan attempts to leave Alex for good and return to his normal upper middle-class life, Alex attempts to kill herself and Dan, not wanting anyone to find out about his fling, decides he needs to stay the night again to make sure Alex doesn’t die and thus potentially reveal his infidelity in the process. This is a decision he will come to regret as saving Alex’s life only furthers her obsession with him.
Will Dan get up the courage to tell his wife what he has done? Will he do it before Alex’s unhinged behavior becomes dangerous to Dan’s entire family? These are the questions of a very minor, very forgettable sub-genre of thrillers. And yet, somehow Fatal Attraction became a massive hit in 1987 and remains part of the cultural zeitgeist 30 years later. Actress Glenn Close as recently as the 25th Anniversary of the film’s release was still being told that she’d terrified men who saw the film.
Why? Why this movie? Why Fatal Attraction? What is it about this sleazy genre thriller that has lasted this long? What is it that keeps this film in our pop culture memory? It baffles me because I have seen knock off after knock off after knock off of the Fatal Attraction formula and none of them are any good. Certainly there is something to be said for being an original but shouldn’t the movie be better than this to last this long?
Fatal Attraction is a cheap, sleazy, silly thriller with over the top performances and capable but not outstanding direction. Adrian Lyne is a director obsessed with sexual politics but he doesn’t have much depth to his obsession. Lyne’s style is to ask big questions but not give the questions much weight beyond the plot in progress. The big question of Fatal Attraction is ‘What would you do if you were Dan?’ That’s not a very interesting question. Everything that happens to Dan is his own fault and while Lyne seems to want us to sympathize with him as Alex goes on the attack, it’s almost comical how unsympathetic Dan is.
Read my full length review in the Geeks Community at Vocal.
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