Fatal Attraction, released in 1987, was one of those era defining smash hits that seemed to tap into the subconscious fears of a nation, in its case those of Reaganite America.
The fear being that despite a well-paid job, a picture perfect family and beautiful house, you are still one bit of thoughtless animal sexytime away from losing everything. At least as far as a man was concerned. In it, Michael Douglas had an affair with Glenn Close only to find she was a complete psycho who would try to destroy his family.
It was retrospectively viewed as a metaphor for Aids, but it wasn’t ever really that clever – rather director Adrian Lyne, that great auteur of style over substance, was just playing on that even more subconscious American fear: women! Evil women! Evil women with jobs! You can’t trust them. Not even with a little affair. It has not dated terribly well, but it remains a corking, sleazy ride of a film; a B movie done good, if you like.
This remake of Fatal Attraction for Paramount Plus attempts to have its gluten-free cake and eat it. Meaning: it wants to update and give fresh perspective on the story, from a less misogynist point of view, while also wanting to be faithful to the original in some ways and deliver those psycho kicks.
This creates a slightly strange experience – it is long and densely scripted series, often polemical and heavy on the Jung quotes, which nevertheless feels compelled to doggedly deliver on the crazy, seemingly despite its own best interests.
Written by Alexandra Cunningham (best known for Desperate Housewives), and directed by Silver Tree (best known as a ‘Friend’ talking head on Harry & Meghan) it has as its leads Joshua Jackson (Pacey from Dawson’s Creek) as Dan Gallagher and Lizzy Caplan (who was very good in the very overrated Fleishman Is In Trouble) as Alex Forrest.
The thing takes forever to get going, spending a very long time caught in legal procedurals; it opens with a Gallagher successfully pleading for an early release from prison for the murder of Forrest, before it shifts into flashback to Gallagher in his prime as a high flying lawyer where he makes up for a career snub, with a bit of flirtation with his younger colleague Forrest.
She seems nice, there’s lot’s of talking, then some really boring sex. A couple of episodes later, the series rewinds to show us Forrest’s perspective, which reveals as a sufferer from unexplained mental issues – she has a therapist and medication of some sort – but also as an unnerving malevolent force, with Gallagher only the latest in a string of lives she enjoys destroying, including neighbours and other employees (Is she now a metaphor for Covid? Perhaps not).
Later episodes bring other perspectives in, including Gallagher’s wife Beth, played by Amanda Peet, as well as show the current day Gallagher trying to find out who really killed Forrest. These multiple timelines slow the action but does an admirable job of playing out the effects of an affair. Indeed at its best, this show conjures how a life is constructed on levels of trust and why deception – lies and self-delusion – can bring it all down.
What it lacks, right at the centre, is an affair that convinces. There is no spark between Jackson and Caplan at all, no sense of a headlong rush into lust at whatever cost. Jackson has nothing close to the lizardey sleaze of Douglas, this guy’s all white vest and socks; he’s far better as the fretting collapsed vessel we see later.
Caplan too, seems to approach the sex scenes like she’s laying kitchen tiles – I’m not saying that we need explicit sex but some passion would be nice, a bit of erotic for the thriller. This is more like Mild Attraction – and her character again is more convincing on her own, as a quietly effective disturber of the peace, weaving and plotting to pull psyches apart.
Whether this is ‘progression’ from Glenn Close’s chilling knife-wielder is another matter entirely – at least with her there was a righteous incensement at being used and tossed by a man, whereas with Caplan she’s incensed because she’s incensed at everything.
There’s certainly an intelligence to this series that makes for a decent watch, and a decent debate, but it lacks excitement. In contrast to another remake doing the rounds at the moment Dead Ringers (although Cronenberg’s original film is hardly one fondly remembered by wide audiences), in which Rachel Weisz has all manner of fun, there’s not much of a gleeful grabbing and subverting of the source material – instead it’s like a lengthy apology which barely covers the fact they’re just doing the same thing all over again anyway.
