Warning: This article contains spoilers about Patricia Highsmith's novel Deep Water and Adrian Lyne's new film adaptation.
In director Adrian Lyne's just-released-to-Hulu adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's 1957 novel Deep Water, Ben Affleck plays Vic, who has an unfaithful wife named Melinda — portrayed by Ana de Armas — and a fascination with the mating habits of snails. The seemingly good-natured Vic has his own habit, which involves murdering the adulterous Melinda's boyfriends with near-clockwork regularity.
The film's screenplay, by Zach Helm (Stranger Than Fiction) and Euphoria creator Sam Levinson, is in many ways very faithful to Highsmith's psychological thriller. Both book and movie, for example, start with Vic informing Melinda's current boyfriend at a party that he has killed a previous suitor, although in such a way that it can be taken as a joke. But there are some major differences: the movie takes place in the present day and takes longer than the book to definitively confirm that Affleck's character really is offing his spouse's beaus. Lyne, meanwhile, has his two leads engage in the kind of lubricious scenes you might expect from the director responsible for 1986's 9½ Weeks and the following year's Fatal Attraction. (Affleck and de Armas famously dated in real-life, though their onscreen sexy time left EW's reviewer Darren Franich somewhat cold. "It lacks the sizzle of Lyne's earlier films," he wrote. "Do we laugh more at sex scenes now? Or are these sex scenes just funny?")
Lyne's film really departs from the source material by Highsmith, whose other books include Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley, with its conclusion. In Highsmith's original tale, an acquaintance of Vic's named Don Wilson uncovers proof of his homicidal ways and calls Melinda to let her know that she is married to a murderer. When Melinda tells Vic that she has spoken to Wilson, he realizes what has happened and strangles Melinda to death, just before Wilson and a policeman arrive at the couple's house. The book ends with the cop walking out into the sunlight with a grinning Vic. "He smiled at Wilson's grim, resentful, the-world-owes-me-a-living face, which was the reflection of the small, dull mind behind it, and Vic cursed it and all it stood for," writes Highsmith. "Silently, and with a smile, and with all that was left of him, he cursed it."
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In the film version, Wilson (played by Tracy Letts) dies in a car crash, one largely caused by Vic, before he can tell anyone what he has learned. Melinda still discovers that Vic has killed the most recent object of her affection, portrayed by Finn Wittrock, when she comes across the character's wallet in her husband's snail-arium. Instead of calling the cops, Melinda burns the wallet, leading the audience to assume that she is okay with — and possibly turned on by — Vic's crimes.
In a 2014 interview with The Wall Street Journal, author and former EW writer Gillian Flynn argued that there is really just one realistic way Highsmith's tale could end. "From the second Vic commits that first murder, you realize that there's no good resolution here," said Flynn, whose own psychological thriller Gone Girl was turned into a 2014 film starring Affleck and directed by David Fincher. "They're both stubborn and psychologically entwined enough that they're not going to part, so you just know that it's going to lead to something very bad for one or both of them. And it's that delicious feeling of trying to figure out where it's going to go... It doesn't feel cheap, it feels like two people going off the rails together."
It is easy to understand why Lyne opted for a happy ending — well, happy for Vic and Melinda anyway — given the desperately bleak nature of the book's climax. Melinda's acceptance of Vic's homicidal tendencies also adds a twist to a film whose main, potentially deflating, revelation is that the person who has been calling himself a murderer all along is indeed a murderer. Will viewers who enjoy what Flynn described as the "delicious" feeling of trying to figure out where the plot is going be satisfied by the new conclusion? Maybe. Though it would probably have left a bad taste in Highsmith's mouth.
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