Deep Water Plot Synopsis
Deep Water is the latest psychological erotic thriller, streaming on Amazon Prime (in the UK) and Hulu (in the US) and centers on married couple, Vic and Melinda.
Vic is retired from working in a morally questionable field involving drone warfare. He goes for long bike rides, has faraway brooding looks and he collects snails. Melinda meanwhile is a fun-loving wife but she’s also a bit of master manipulator, knowing exactly how to push peoples buttons – especially Vic.
Vic allows his wife to have affairs in order to avoid a divorce she’s threatening, spending most of his time channelling his inner Gone Girl moody looks as he watches Melinda from afar while she engages with numerous different men. Only, each of these fellas start to disappear in increasingly suspicious circumstances. Is Vic responsible?
What happens to Charlie?
Midway through the movie, Vic notices that Melinda is starting to grow closer to her piano teacher, Charlie. At a party, Vic is consumed by jealousy and becomes angry and resentful. All of this crescendos in suitably dramatic fashion.
Vic drowns Charlie in the pool while everyone else is sheltering from the rain, but when the police show up he feigns ignorance. Melinda meanwhile is adamant that Vic is responsible for murdering him. However, Vic is not charged with murder, with the blow to the head Charlie sustained actually a result of Don dropping Charlie on his head. So for now, Vic gets away with murder.
Does anyone else suspect Vic?
After this event – and an earlier one involving a boy called Joel Dash whom Vic boasted about murdering a guy who grew close to his wife – Don starts to exhibit some suspicions over Affleck’s brooding character.
With the help of Melinda, Don hires a PI to dig into Vic’s history. Only, Vic soon learns that his wife was actually involved in this too. Vic confronts Don back at his house though, embarrassing Don in front of his wife when he brings up the $743 he paid as part of this whole charade.
After Charlie’s death and the PI gig, everything escalates when Melinda grows closer to Tony Cameron, playing further mind games with Vic in the process. During dinner at their house, Tony suggests they cook some of Vic’s snails but given Vic’s fascination and obsession with these mollusks, it doesn’t go down particularly well.
The next day, Vic drives an unsuspecting Tony out to the woods where he smacks him in the head with a rock. Tony staggers back, loses his footing and tumbles down a ravine, hitting the ground with a sickening thud, blood oozing from the side of his head. Vic decides to cover everything up and ties rocks to Tony’s body with his belt. I mean, he could have just left him and it would have been classed an accident but there we go.
How does Melinda learn the truth about Vic?
In the morning, Vic rides out to pick up something Melinda left down at the gorge, where they visited the previous morning for a picnic. In his absence, Melinda heads into the basement where she notices all the snails and accidentally steps on one too.
Melinda also finds Anthony’s wallet, tucked away in one of the boxes and realizes what her husband has done.
Meanwhile, Vic starts fishing around with the dead body, trying to hide it from view, but Don finds him there red-handed, having earlier followed him himself. Don’s found Melinda’s red scarf but when Tony’s hand floats to the surface, he realizes Vic has killed him and hurries back to his car, desperate to get away.
Vic follows on his bike, trying to chase Don while he’s speeding down the dirt track… and he catches up too. Vic takes a shortcut, rockets in front of Don’s car and tumbles over the handlebars to the ground. Don swerves to miss him, and ends up careering off the path and into the water below. So naturally, Vic rides home again.
How Does Deep Water end?
The final shot of the movie echoes back to the start, as Melinda tells Vic that she’s “seen Tony”, referencing the wallet she found earlier in the basement. Melinda burns Tony’s ID, accepting Vic’s behaviour as he’s the only one who has actually stayed with her through her crazy mind games and manipulation.
By the end of the movie we see Melinda has fully accepted Vic’s murderous behaviour while also coming to terms with her own insecurities and flaws. Melinda has spun that into a twisted form of love, hence why she’s so hot and cold with Vic at different moments of the movie.
We don’t see the fate of Don here though, but it’s safe to assume he’s probably dead.
Is there a post-credit sequence?
There is a post-credit sequence but it features Trixie singing along in her car. A bizarrely cutesy ending to what’s 0therwise a rather bleak and pretty disappointing ending to this film.
Read More: Deep Water Movie Review
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