Here is a low-budget erotic thriller directed by Yara Estrada Lowe, which recalls both the highs and the lows of the genre’s heyday. As with classics of the genre such as Basic Instinct, Fatal Attraction and The Last Seduction, the plot is one that, if it offered psychological realism, would qualify as a freak tragedy. But since it’s an erotic thriller, it qualifies as a romp.
Husband and wife Caleb and Celine are planning to have a child but, unbeknown to Celine, Caleb has a bit on the side, Fiona. Celine has the worst day of her life when she learns that not only is she herself infertile, but her husband has knocked up his mistress. Caleb subsequently divorces her and goes off to marry his mistress and become the perfect dad. And that’s the beginning of an incredible – in both senses – series of twists and turns too ludicrous and enjoyable to spoil here.
The intriguing thing about this film is its slippery moral perspective. The film treats Caleb and Fiona as more or less the couple to root for, which is atypical; usually these films are keen to punish infidelity and reassert the primacy of the marriage bed. “I fell in love with a married man. God, it sounds terrible when I say it out loud,” Fiona muses to her gay best friend. Caleb abdicates all responsibility because the sex is so intense, marvelling: “I don’t know how to stop it.” Meanwhile Celine becomes the sorta-kinda villain of the piece, but only in the sense that she gets up to some crazy vengeance. The film doesn’t seem to judge her for going wildly off the deep end. It’s a little like the great tragic operas: why moralise when it’s so much more fun to watch the world burn?
But directors these days just aren’t given the same sorts of budgets that the likes of Basic Instinct commanded during the bonkbuster’s 1990s heyday. This has its pros and cons. We don’t get the premium locations and glossy designer magazine sheen. Liz Fenning brings a splendidly unhinged vibe to Celine, but the daytime-TV soapiness of some of the other performances, while not inappropriate to some of the ripe plot, regularly lands us in so-bad-it’s-good territory. This applies most notably to the incredibly handsome Carlo Mendez as Caleb, who, upon figuring out one of many eye-rolling twists, recalls nothing so much as the ludicrous to-camera mugging of Friends’ Joey Tribbiani, as immortalised in many a gif. It might be fun to see what Estrada Lowe would do with a bigger budget and some marquee stars – and yet in all honesty, it could be the faintly bargain-basement nature of the enterprise that gives it its charm.
• Demise is on digital platforms from 14 April.
