The Deep End Reviews
For the most part ... the filmmakers and performers invest a high level of intelligence and sympathy into The Deep End.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
For all its genre trappings, this is an intelligent, probing study of an ordinary woman under extraordinary duress.
The Deep End is the year's best movie since Memento.
The Deep End does what too few films even attempt -- it takes an ordinary life and places it in an extraordinary situation just believable enough to be terrifying.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
Houston Chronicle
Top CriticThe film ultimately fails, either because the premise is too absurd, or the execution isn't absurd enough.
Takes the quiet, nonviolent approach to conjuring up thrills.
Swinton mesmerizes as the desperate mother of three under siege.
An exceptionally involving and intelligent thriller.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
Has a cool, glassy appeal -- but then, so does a fish tank.
An extraordinarily riveting drama.
| Original Score: 5/5
Superbly acted, strangely moving.
| Original Score: 4.5/5
Even when The Deep End takes an unfortunate turn toward convention, Swinton is still there, pulling us along.
Remains rooted in the real world, which makes its story all the more satisfying -- and chilling.
| Original Score: 3.5/4
Sucks us into its vortex of sex, lies and videotape and refuses to let go -- at least for the first hour or so.
It's intense and involving, and it doesn't let us go.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
A perfect example of a small, well-made, and (in its central role) rivetingly acted film.
An intelligently suspenseful and incongruously witty chamber drama.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
Its self-awareness is never less than jarring -- trash too high-minded to come out and indulge itself.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
If the captivating turns and stellar acting of The Deep End don't carry you away, the incredible water imagery surely will.
Elegantly made, romantically doomy, curiously affecting.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4.5/5
A thrummingly satisfying '40s-style women's melodrama cleverly disguised as an art-house picture.
Makes for hypnotic viewing, anchored by a star who's the very model of grace under pressure.
USA Today
Top CriticOne of the most invigorating experiences of the summer.
A beautifully wrought suspense drama that measures the full depths of mother love.
An intelligent, extremely well-acted thriller.
| Original Score: 3/4
Exquisitely made with a mesmerizing sense of style, it shows the wonderful things that can happen when traditional material is both handled with care and adroitly updated.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5/5
Swinton provides her own brand of incandescence, doubling as the film's aching heart and its center of gravity.
It's the powerful chemistry between the crudely handsome Goran Visnjic ... and the extraordinary Tilda Swinton ... that makes the film relentlessly captivating.
See it for Swinton's embodiment of unadulterated maternal will.
Full Review
| Original Score: B-
Springs surprises that entertain and provoke.
| Original Score: 4/5
