Irresistible (2006)

 

cast: Susan Sarandon, Sam Neil, Emily Blunt

 

Our rating: 3 out of 5

Rated: R

reviewed by: Charity Bishop

Decent thrillers are difficult to come by and require enough nuances about the script to keep audiences from losing interest without sacrificing plot for the sake of "scares." Irresistible is a little-known Australian production that managed to keep me riveted from beginning to end.

There is something sinister going on in the home of Sophie (Sarandon) and Craig (Neil). Happily married for ten years and both highly successful in their individual lines of business, they have two beautiful little girls and no reason for concern... until odd things begin to happen. One of their daughters' toys has gone missing. Leaving the house for a few minutes to fetch the girls from the bus stop, Sophie remembers that she has left the iron on, but on returning home, it is unplugged. Then her favorite dress goes missing from her closet, and a neighbor says she has seen a woman entering the house. Recently having lost her mother, Sophie puts these incidents down to over-exhaustion and attempts to keep her mind focused on her work. She has been asked, along with several other famous artists, to contribute "her life in images" for a coffee table book. But even her studio is not immune to general weirdness. One of her sketches is ruined and some of her pictures have gone missing from an album.

No longer able to write it off as absentmindedness, Sophie begins to wonder if her husband's new associate Mara (Blunt) is behind it. On more than one occasion they have "run into one another," or shown up to the same event wearing the same thing. More disturbing, Mara drops by one afternoon wearing the same dress that has gone missing from Sophie's closet, only to have the missing garment turn up again a few days later. Paranoia takes Sophie to extreme measures but she cannot determine if her own psychosis is bringing on delusions or if Mara has something sinister planned. Admittedly, I knew almost at once what the twist to this movie was going to be. There are some very clever clues threaded throughout that were not difficult for me to follow through to their logical conclusion, but not knowing for certain what would happen next kept me on the edge of my seat. From the very first scene of closet doors creaking and one of the girls mentioning that she saw someone in the hall, to the conclusion, I was a bit unnerved.

Emily Blunt is best known for her lighter and more flirtatious performances but here is delightfully sinister and dark to the point of the audience not quite knowing what she might be capable of. Neil and Sarandon are always a pleasure to watch and have a good dynamic but it is the incidents that drive the film rather than its cast, a complicated series of coincidences. It was also reasonably clean, which surprised me. Three f-words (one used sexually) taint the dialogue, along with one use of GD. Sophie accuses her husband of being infatuated with Mara and the two share some lingering glances. On Craig receiving a promotion, Mara celebrates by kissing him, which then turns to passionate making-out on the couch (he undoes her blouse) before they are interrupted. The R-rating comes from a flashback or dream that involves a fairly graphic sex scene in silhouette (lots of movement, and brief nudity).

Violence is not too much of a problem but an infuriated Craig throws his wife down on a bed in order to shock her out of her rant (she reacts as if he has struck her), and two women fight and struggle on a flight of stairs; one tips over the railing and falls into the basement beneath. Mara recounts a story of her best friend being burned to death. We see that a woman's pants are on fire before someone puts it out with a blanket. A woman is attacked by a swarm of wasps and hospitalized. The ending seems anticlimactic but then builds to an ominous twist. It is not the most brilliant thriller I have ever seen, but one of the few that scared me from beginning to end. I'm not sure the tension would hold up with a second viewing but the first time around it's fabulous.