The Deep End

On theatrical release Scott McGehee and David Seigel's film was critically praised as an “intelligent” thriller and Tilda Swinton was touted as Oscar material for her performance as Margaret Hall, a mother who goes to extraordinary lengths to conceals her son’s possible involvement in a murder. Frankly it is hard to understand what people were seeing in this. Swinton is good but the film is only average and to some extent she is miscast and thus her performance never really engages.

The plot is premised on the mother’s spontaneous error of concealing the body of a man who she believes may have been murdered by her teenage son. From that act proceeds a spiralling series of complications that, of course, results in more death and destruction. The problem is that Swinton’s Maggie Hall is a remarkably cool and level-headed customer and the initial act does not convince. We are, after all, what we see, so why would she assume her son was a killer and is her response probable (not to mention effective)? Both it and virtually everything else in the film unfolds with such mechanical tidiness that one half expects there to be some kind of meta-level twist that will give the film a genuine darkness but no, one development follows another effortlessly.

Raymond Barry’s turn as a Dennis Hopper-type sociopath is a cliché and Peter Donat’s father-in-law is a clumsy bit of acting. On the other hand, Goran Visnjic lends a nice softness to his role as a sensitive New Age crook but why his character was involved in the first place is never explained and his conversion to Maggie’s cause is almost comically easy.

One can only conclude that McGehee and Seigel got lucky with the approbation heaped on their film which has since sunk out of sight.

DVD Extras: None

Available from: Shock Entertainment

 

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