Every now and then I come across a film that hits me like a cattle prod to the neck. If you watch hundreds of movies a year (like I do), then it becomes easy to forget how effective truly expertly crafted suspense films can be. Case in point: Adrian Lyne's Fatal Attraction. A now infamous film that depicts a married attorney being stalked and terrorized by a mentally unbalanced woman he had an affair with, Fatal Attraction shocked late 80s audiences and reportedly made many men reconsider cheating on their spouses. Glenn Close's performance as the psychotic Alexandra "Alex" Forrest is the stuff of legend. At first, she seems like a normal person with attachment issues. But then she evolves into a full-fledged monster, incessantly calling his house, killing his daughter's pet bunny, and then, in one of the most unsettling sequences in the entire film, kidnapping his daughter for an afternoon. I must have held my breath the entire time Alex had the girl, waiting for a sudden moment of violence that I knew was coming...but didn't. If I had to levy one major criticism, it would be how by the end of the film Alex seemingly develops slasher villain powers: she can break into buildings without being noticed, can survive being drowned for an extended period of time, and can even shrug off otherwise debilitating wounds. But these aren't deal-breakers in my opinion. By the time these scenes arrive, the audience has become so terrified of Alex that these violations of time and space are readily accepted. I've heard that this film sparked off major criticism from feminist critics who believed that the film suggested that all sexually liberated women were mentally unbalanced. But I don't buy it. Nobody thought that Hannibal Lector was anything other than a monster. Why can't Alex just be crazy? Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and an unstoppable maniac is just an unstoppable maniac.
8/10
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