Fatal Attraction (1987)
Directed by Adrian Lyne
A married man's one-night stand comes back to haunt him when that lover begins to stalk him and his family.
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What critics compared Fatal Attraction to
The sins of the high-school cafeteria come home to roost in “The Gift,” a coolly unsettling thriller that begins as an unironic homage to late-’80s/early-’90s yuppies-in-peril dramas like “Fatal Attraction” and “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle,” before taking a turn toward the moral and existential minefield of Michael Haneke’s “Cache.”
The television spots and trailers sell the film as a stalker thriller akin to films such as Pacific Heights and Fatal Attraction.
In staging that setup, Edgerton -- who makes his writing and directing debut behind the camera while also appearing in front of it -- harkens back to the domestic intruder thrillers of the 1980s and '90s -- such as "Pacific Heights," "Fatal Attraction" and so on -- where a seemingly good-natured and friendly enough person turns into a living nightmare for those he or she bugs, stalks and ultimately terrorizes.
"The Gift" is a tight little thriller that recalls the good old days of "Fatal Attraction" and "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle," back when suspicious packages appeared on the doorstep, no affair went unpunished, and the family dog was never safe.
The Gift recalls the stalked, terrorized or targeted yuppies of Fatal Attraction and Pacific Heights.
The astute horror fan might think they can anticipate what comes next; likely something in the vein of Fatal Attraction or One Hour Photo, where a deranged sociopath infiltrates a happy family and slowly tears it apart through manipulation and violence.
There’s an inescapable “Fatal Attraction” vibe to “Fatale,” though there’s another film from which it more significantly borrows a key plot element (to name it would be telling; let’s just say it’s a Hitchcock).
Taylor is so busy that Fatale throws back twice: first to erotic thrillers like Fatal Attraction , then further to the twisty noirs that inspired them.
This miscasting is just one of the problems with Fatale , a movie that pretends it's going to be more than the second-rate Fatal Attraction ripoff it really is.
Culture Audience: “Fatale” will appeal primarily to people who like watching cheap, inferior ripoffs of “Fatal Attraction.”
Fatale is a silly, twisty, mildly effective mash-up of Unlawful Entry (1992) and Fatal Attraction (1987), and while the end result can’t even remotely reach their heights it’s no less entertaining for the effort.
Two-time Academy Award-winner Hilary Swank seems to be in slum mode with this mix of “Fatal Attraction” (1987) and crazy cop drama and the dark and droll revenge thriller “The Hunt” from earlier this year.
Under the ironclad laws decreed by movieland, we know that cheating on a spouse leads to nothing but trouble (Fatal Attraction); snooping on a suspected philanderer will only uncover things you really didn’t want to know about (What Lies Beneath, every Lifetime movie ever); and, as shown in Atom Egoyan’s Chloe, hiring a prostitute to tempt your spouse into infidelity is not such a terrific idea.
But Erin Cressida Wilson’s script merely grazes the theme, instead taking us on a “Fatal Attraction”-like detour with Chloe in the family-destroying stalker role.
It’s like we’ve fallen through the looking glass into a Lifetime TV Fatal Attraction knockoff.
“Chloe” takes that rather improbable situation as its starting point — before veering into creepy, “Fatal Attraction” territory.
Based on the terrible 2003 French film Nathalie, Chloe unspools like a limp copy of Fatal Attraction with way more sheen than substance.
Even when Chloe is all the more transforming into Glenn Close in "Fatal Attraction," Seyfried remains not only immensely watchable, but also believable and sympathetic.
1987's "Fatal Attraction." 1992's "Single White Female."
If you saw the trailers for The Roommate and all you could think is "Wow, that looks just like a rip-off of Single White Female, which itself was little more than one of the better rip-offs of Fatal Attraction," then you're a wise person.
Like “Fatal Attraction” and “Single White Female” before it, “The Roommate” shows that when pets start going missing in thrillers, that’s the time for people to realize that a psychopath is around.
The buzz: From the studio that brought you Beyoncé's "Fatal Attraction" rip-off "Obsessed" comes something even worse!
Meester knows this and could have just played everything for camp, but every so often she spouts these Fatal Attraction-like "I won't be ignored!"
Since this is a Miss Teen “Fatal Attraction” ‒ with baked kitten replacing rabbit stew on the menu ‒ everyone in Sara’s circle of friends is in jeopardy, including party animal Tracy (Alyson Michalka) and new boyfriend Stephen (Cam Gigandet).
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With its steady pacing and probing, supple camera work (handled by Soderbergh, under his pseudonym Peter Andrews), the film evokes classic psychodramas, from Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo to Roman Polanski’s Repulsion, as well as kinky offshoots such as Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct.
The premise is patently yet intriguingly ridiculous—a Manhattan-set psychological thriller that satirizes Big Pharma paranoia, while harking back to such crazy-lady favorites as Rosemary’s Baby and Fatal Attraction.
This last one, Side Effects, looks like an homage to the '80s heyday of the twisty psychological thriller—Fatal Attraction, Jagged Edge, and Dead Calm—and to a large extent, it plays out as exactly that.
A doozy of a Hitchcockian thriller with Jude Law, Rooney Mara and Catherine Zeta-Jones, “Effects” is a go-for-broke valentine to ’80s cinematic psychological potboilers such as “Jagged Edge” and “Fatal Attraction.”
It’s telling that Soderbergh watched Fatal Attraction “a lot” while preparing to shoot Side Effects (screenwriter Scott Z. Burns was probably busy studying Basic Instinct).
"Side Effects" takes a page from the "Fatal Attraction" school of late eighties/early nineties erotic thrillers, chucking it onto a contemporary hook: the pratfalls of the pharmaceutical industry.
…a horror version of Fatal Attraction…
The switch in vocal intensity and her incredible physical contortions (and those rubbery facial expressions) earn her a spot in the loopy ladies of terror “hall of fame”, right next to Glen Close as Alex of FATAL ATTRACTION and Jennifer Jason Leigh’s Hedy in SINGLE WHITE FEMALE.
There’s no moment at which she’s simply a Fatal Attraction-esque bunny boiler.
…this is more than just a Fatal Attraction story of deranged, obsessive behaviour…
Obsession can look like that Fatal Attraction-style movie where a crazy woman goes nuts for a guy, with insane over-the-top antics making her a villain, that forces us to feel sorry for the man who just wanted a full-time girlfriend.
…the sort of extreme possessiveness that would put Fatal Attraction’s Alex to shame…
Lopez is suitably gung-ho with her succession of terrified reactions, but the biggest problem is that Guzman is mostly a smirking bore, too blandly handsome and one-note to give his character the attention-must-be-paid, home-wrecking spirit of a Glenn Close in "Fatal Attraction."
"The Boy Next Door" is rather obviously a gender-flipped version of "Fatal Attraction," the 1987 classic about an extramarital fling that turns into a nightmare.
The story is a gender inversion of Fatal Attraction (1987), filtered through a few recent scandals in which female high school teachers were caught fooling around with male students: the heroine (Lopez) is seduced by a charming hunk (Ryan Guzman) who's just transferred to her school, but he turns psycho on her when she rejects his subsequent advances.
1987's "Fatal Attraction," 1996's "Fear," and a whole lineage of similarly plotted "...From Hell" thrillers welcome a new descendant with "The Boy Next Door," producer Jason Blum's latest micro-budget effort from genre-centric Blumhouse Productions.
It's more a "Banal Delusion" than a "Fatal Attraction," though.
Throughout the film, Heigl channels Joan Crawford in “Mommie Dearest” and Alex Forrest in “Fatal Attraction,” two movies that have clearly influenced “Unforgettable.”
She’s the descendant of Alex “Fatal Attraction” Forrest, Nurse Ratched, Annie Wilkes and Faye Dunaway’s Joan Crawford in “Mommie Dearest” — trapped in a script that even the Lifetime channel might reject for being too over the top.
Heigl does her damndest to try and cement a new erotic thriller icon, hovering somewhere between Rebecca De Mornay’s lethal caretaker in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle and Glenn Close’s jilted one night stand from Fatal Attraction.
A gorgeous ex-wife who regards Dawson with the same fond affection Glenn Close had for that bunny in "Fatal Attraction."
The film doesn't quite know whether it wants to be a low-grade B-movie like that or a trashy Skinemax flick with Hollywood B-listers in the leads or an actual serious effort a la "Fatal Attraction" (director Denise Di Novi is SO not the visual stylist as Adrian Lyne, who directed "Fatal Attraction" along with such high-grade smut as "Indecent Proposal," and "Unfaithful").
As a cinematic subgenre, the woman-stalker thriller is hardly among the most elevated, though it has had its moments of cultural relevance, from Play Misty for Me (1971) to Fatal Attraction (1987) to Single White Female (1992).
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The film, with a screenplay by Flynn, is as bifurcated as the half-truths it is built on, with echoes of "To Die For" and "Fatal Attraction."
Sure, it makes knowing nods to classics directed by Hitchcock, let alone lesser but hugely popular ’80s flicks as Fatal Attraction and The Jagged Edge.
Pike leaves nothing behind, delving full throttle into an iconic performance that will rank up there with the likes of Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction.
Suffice to say that its explicit sex and violence and one-damn-thing-after-another, to-hell-with-realism plotting put it in the " Basic Instinct "/" Fatal Attraction "/" Presumed Innocent " wheelhouse.
The fact that this film is getting as much play on the talk-show route as “Fatal Attraction” did only makes me think of the dirth of quality TV, and that the Super-smart, Sexy, Ivy-league, Sociopathic Wife is merely the latest flavor of the month — probably to keep us, the 99%, from looking at the real sociopaths who run things.
Shocking, subversive, and often wickedly funny, Gone Girl is not Fincher’s best film, but certainly one of his most entertaining, and Fatal Attraction-level damning to romance (great for your anti-date night!).
Derailed is one more example of actors coming to the rescue, here Clive Owen as a married businessman whose sole straying from the path (not even consumed) spirals into Fatal Attraction grounds.
For paradigms of the latter, see Barbara Stanwyck in "Double Indemnity" and Glenn Close in "Fatal Attraction."
Based on a book by James Siegel, “Derailed” starts off a bit like Hitchcock’s “Strangers on a Train,” but then moves forward to borrow from more modern thrillers like “Fatal Attraction” and “Cape Fear.”
Written for the screen by Stuart Beattie ("Collateral") from a book by James Siegel, "Derailed" most closely resembles moralistic American films of the 1980s and 1990s, most notably "Fatal Attraction," that chastised characters for their cushy Yuppie lifestyles as much as for their sexual indiscretions.
But before you can say ”Fatal Attraction,” their tryst in a flophouse hotel goes horribly awry when a violent thief and sadist of French derivation (Vincent Cassel) - naturellement - beats Charles mercilessly and attacks Lucinda.