I'll bet that if you removed the soundtrack from Jerzy Skolimowski's Deep End and presented it as a silent film, it could be passed off as a great horror film. Of course, that's just my inner cynic talking. Deep End is a film about young love and near-homicidal obsession. It begins when a 15-year-old named Mike gets a job working at a swimming baths in London. He is subjected to a rather brutal sexual awakening when he discovers Susan, an attendant at the baths who is ten years his elder. She flirts and leads him on and he falls for her hook, line, and sinker. Mike begins stalking Susan and her fiancé, even following them to clubs and porno theaters around London. The film builds to a crescendo when Mike helps Susan find the diamond for her wedding ring after it fell off. As they empty and melt bags of snow and dirt from the area where the diamond was lost into the bath's central swimming pool, Mike strips naked and assaults her. I won't give away what happens afterwards, but suffice it to say that the bath patrons will have one hell of a spectacle when they arrive in the morning. I hesitate to promote Deep End because the director's intentions seem ambiguous. Mike's destructive habits are not shown in a negative light. In fact, his agonies are portrayed with an almost poetic sense of consolation. Are we supposed to feel bad for him? Are we supposed to feel that he was cheated out of a relationship with Susan? I'm honestly not sure.
7/10
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