The Deep End

Bomb Rating: 

I think I know the reason there's been a lot of public concern that Baby Boomers might be raising kids with the moral compasses of serial killers and the attention spans of mongoloid mall-walkers. The reason is because it's true.

I think I know the reason there's been a lot of public concern that Baby Boomers might be raising kids with the moral compasses of serial killers and the attention spans of mongoloid mall-walkers. The reason is because it's true. Does this generation know anything about talking to their kids or disciplining them?

Margaret Hall (Tilda Swinton) discovers that a man may be drilling for oil in her son's (Jonathan Tucker) "back forty", so instead of asking her son, Beau, about this relationship, she goes to the other man and tells him to leave Beau alone. Not long after this, the man comes over to the house and ends up dead. Margaret finds him impaled on an anchor. Instead of giving any thought to what this means, she drags the guy's body into a boat and heads out into the lake near her home.

This lake is absolutely gigantic, but for whatever reason, Margaret drops the body at the very edge in about five feet of water so that the man's face is still visible. There would have been no movie if Margaret had dropped him anywhere else in the lake -- like the deep part, for instance. Naturally, somebody finds the guy. The next thing Margaret knows, Alek (Goran Visnjic) shows up demanding money, threatening to turn over a tape he has of Beau and the man playing a lively game of "priest and choirboy."

What was this stupid woman thinking? Directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel have her drop the body between some rocks to make it seem like this isn't the dumbest thing ever, but it is. When she finds the guy's body, why doesn't she go to her son and simply ask, "What happened?" instead of assuming Beau did it? After she sees the tape, why doesn't she go to Beau and ask, "Are you gay, or is this just a phase?" At least part of the reason she doesn't is because she's married to a military man who's away at sea all the time and wouldn't appreciate her son's predilection for hot and hairy man-ass. Thus, she practices the "don't ask, don't tell" method of parenthood. Needless to say, it fails miserably.

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