Fatal Attraction Pt 3: Who is the monster and who is the victim?
Tuesday, April 1, 2025 at 10:00PM by Nathaniel R
Glenn Close at the Oscars, awaiting on the verdict yet again
Welcome back to the boiling and bloody finale of our three-part retrospective of Adrian Lyne's classic thriller Fatal Attraction (1987). In part 1, Husband and father Dan Gallagher (Michael Douglas in his best performance of 1987 -- sorry Wall Street) stumbled out of the pouring rain and straight into an even wetter two-night stand with Alex Forrest (Glenn Close in her most iconic role). Things start hot but end bloody with a suicide attempt. In part 2, Dan clings hard to his wife Beth and his daughter Ellen, desperate for normalcy again. He eagerly grants them their dream gifts: a new home in the suburbs and a pet bunny rabbit, respectively. As we return to the film, Beth and Ellen are still oblivious to the family's pregnant stalker.
One more thing: I realize this retrospective would have been less out-of-the-blue obsessive and better-timed if tied to the 35th anniversary three years back or the launch of the inferior miniseries retelling exactly two years ago or even Michael Douglas's 80th birthday last year. In this way I fear I'm much like Dan Gallagher (Michael Douglas) himself delaying the inevitable. He kept missing perfect off ramps to avoid this dangerous liaison with Alex and even its aftermath. Where did it get him? Now he's down one car, paying two mortgages, lying to his wife, and trying to avoid a very angry stalker while angling for a life-changing promotion at work. Pass the beta blockers and back to the film...
[voiceover] You're scared of me aren't you? You're fucking frightened of me -- you're afraid. You're afraid, aren't you? You gutless, heartless, spineless, fucking son-of-a-bitch.
1:21:03 Dan is still sneaking around -- albeit for less sexy reasons,,,
That's that darker callback shot we mentioned would come in part two as Dan's climbs to his attic/den. The first time we saw this shot, it was husband and wife together on the stairs and the light was brighter and the room made Dan giddy happy. This time he's sneaking up there in the dark, to avoid his wife, so he can finish listening to Alex's psychotic "Play Me" tape. She's right, actually. He is finally scared of her AND she is fucking frightening and he is spineless!
1:21:58 Now this is the kind of jump-scare we like. No music blaring. But it's still an audience jump or at least a Dan jump. And funny, too, Dan screaming when Beth (who he hasn't seen coming) touches his shoulder. Of course he launches right into lies to cover up what he's doing. Dan is a terrible liar -- as we've seen throughout the film -- but he's so fast and calm and believable with the lies whenever it's Beth being lied to that you do have to wonder as the film progresses just how many of these Attractions have happened in the past; only problem is this one turned Fatal. While we wish the screenplay had left us wondering about Alex's pregnancy we do like that it is as least ambiguous about Dan's history. The clues are there that he might be a serial cheater but it's still a "might". And...
You can't go around arresting people for what they might do.
1:22:55 Absolute gem of a little two-scene performance from Michael Arkin (film debut) as a Lieutenant that Dan goes to see about his stalker. It's all over his face that he knows that Dan is lying to him about "his client". It's also all over his face to Dan that he's humoring him about this terrible lie and know he's talking to the cheater. His line reading of "it's his bed, he'll have to lie in it" is both sympathetic and judgmental. The lieutenant gives him good advice to do nothing. (At least on paper. This is Alex Forrest we're talking about and this is most definitely not "out of her system".)
1:24:12 The movie's three innocents all in one shot: Quincy. Ellen. Bunny. As we return from chills to comforting domesticity again. Ellen is called to the car for a family visit to the grandparents. Once there it's all about Dan loving on his family. The movie yo-yos like this with rhythmic predictability after the affair, led by its protagonist who needs this grounding warmth between emotionally gruelling run-ins or conversations about Alex. But who wouldn't?
1:27:02 That yo-yoing effect is no small part of why the next jump scare is so enormously famous beyond just the sick joke of a boiled bunny. Lyne, cast, and crew have created such a warm lived-in domesticity with the Gallaghers that its violation feels unthinkable, nightmarish. We get tranquil shots of the suburban home, exterior and interior as the family returns home. But you know somethings amiss from just how quiet the film grows. There's now no underscore and the handheld camera returns as Beth sees a pot boiling on the stove --she wasn't cooking when they left. We crosscut between Beth's confused approach and Ellen running to her beloved Bunny's cage (as one surmises she has done every single time the family returns to the house even though we've only had that one shot of her by the cage previously). Then the horrible reveal. The scene ends with twinned mother/daughter screams.
In the quiet aftermath of this horror Ellen lies on her bed crying while Beth comfort her. The slow pan of the room reveals a pet hamster and numerous framed drawing of other animals: cat, mouse, horse (or is it a llama?). Ellen's deep love of animals makes the previous scene's horror even sadder and also gives some retroactive context to Dan's complaints about too many pets earlier in the film.
01:29:46 - With the bunny boiling, Dan finally comes clean with Beth. Anne Archer really is fantastic in this sequence. She's so desperately unprepared emotionally. Archer doesn't overplay Beth's despair but just let's the awareness slowly seep in. The quiet face drop makes it all the more wrenching.
I want you out of here. I want you out of this house.
01:31:09 - The news about the pregnancy is too much for her, though.
01:31:18 - This three part retrospective may be starting to feel like a long ode to the editors but we must give praise where it's due, even if that praise grows repetitive. Of all the ways this fight could have played out onscreen, Lyne and his editing team choose to hold on a grieving Ellen (her parents have not seen her enter the room) for an unbearable eight full seconds as the Gallaghers continue screaming. She strokes her new comfort blanket, a pet unicorn, confused by the fight and finally overwhelmed. It is a jarring reminder of the human cost of broken homes, in the middle of a drama dependent on that very same breaking for audience thrills.
When the parents finally notice her, the screaming is snuffed out though the pain isn't. A cut from Ellen crying to Dan moving out to speed up the film again. With the secret now out the movie is hurled towards its climax.
[PHONE] This is Beth Gallagher. If you ever come near my family again, I'll kill you. Do you understand?
1:33:19 - At this point we all hate Dan Gallagher, yes? While it might have been necessary to put his wife on the phone to drive the point home with Alex, it also feels cravenly. This shot of Michael Douglas just stinks of guilt while the corresponding shot of Alex, feels neutral, yes? Again, I think it's overstated how much Fatal Attraction sides with Dan. One of its secret weapons is this uncomfortable push-and-pull between sympathizing with both leads and despising their behavior.
1:36:30 - Speaking of despising Alex, though, minutes later she's back to terrorizing the family. Smart seemingly random shot here of an anonymous mother and daughter at Ellen's school, as Beth tears past them "you don't understand!" looking for her own daughter who is nowhere to be seen at the school during the alloted pick-up time.
1:38:00 - As suspected Alex has abducted Ellen. At first smiling and buying her ice-cream, like they're auntie and niece spending the day at an amusement park, things get creepier when we begin the traditional roller coast climb and the promise of that heart-dropping plummet. It's a little sick meta joke about the Thriller genre itself, isn't it? We want that climb, that building of dread, so that we may scream in cathartic release when things inevitably and suddenly go south. The cross-cuts are of course to frazzled Beth as she searches for her missing daughter and rear-ends another car in her panic. (The Gallaghers clearly never had that talk with Ellen about not getting into cars with strangers.)
1:39:40 But Alex merely drops little Ellen back off at home, content to have wreaked havoc on Beth and Dan's nerves. Beth is now in the hospital. Great detail to feature not one but two shots wherein you can feel a sub-zero chill from Beth's parents when Dan enters the hospital / Beth's hospital room. Dan breaks down crying, which he hasn't done before now, so you know we're reaching the climax of the film.
1:41:36 After commuting back to work to seek revenge late at night, Dan crashes through Alex's door in a violent rage. While the scoring here is fairly firmly in Generic Thriller mode, the rest of these violent scenes really work in Fatal Attraction in part because they feel so unhinged and clumsy. Neither Dan nor Alex are practiced in hand-to-hand combat and their kicks and throws and stumbles all feel unplanned and painful, even if it's clearly choreographed with the stunt doubles with an eye on producing memorable shots like Alex's face pressed against frosted bathroom glass.
1:42:35 Speaking of novice warriors, the murderous feeling abates when Dan realizes how close he is to killing Alex, leaving her gasping for air. Note the shot/reverse shot here which gets a damning echo in the film's penultimate scene.
1:43:15 Here's a next level detail during the fight of Alex turning on the water and cupping it to her face, which is a very Alex thing to do if you remember the sex scene. Similarly note that the clumsiness of this fight is pure Dan (who began the movie stubbing his toe!). This ability to root action within characterization can really elevate any story or genre. This faucet beat also gives the fight choreo the perfect breathing room to set up the reveal of the knife before the violence explodes again. This kind of alerting the audience just before the characters is a wonderfully tried-and-true storytelling technique. You know Alex will grab this knife before she does. Being just a second or even half-second ahead of a character or characters can provide popcorn thrills as potent as a true surprise that hits both characters and audience simultaneously.
The fight continues and then abates, both characters exhausted.
1:43:35 - [SILLY TANGENT: The calendar behind Alex Forrest is a December 1987 calendar. I looked up the dates which means that Fatal Attraction is canonically sci fi. It takes place in the future since it was released in September of 1987. Haha. This fight had yet to happen as audiences were in the process of watching it!]
1:44:03 - A crucial shot in the lore of Fatal Attraction. The fight over, Dan sets down the knife. In the original filmed ending, Alex, in her last act of revenge, kills herself with the knife to frame Dan for murder, his fingerprints being all over it. Test audiences didn't like the downer ending, with Dan's life ruined, and reshoots were called.
1:44:42 - This slow zoom out on Alex -- which is far more exciting as a moving picture than a screenshot -- has always been my favourite shot from Fatal Attraction so I must wax rhapsodic.
There's something ineffably mysterious and mesmeric about this moment, post-climax, the camera backing away mirroring's Dan's retreat (He isn't dumb enough to turn his back on Alex this late in the narrative). Her expression becomes something like a smile but it also feels like melancholy goodbye and/or maybe abject despair personified. Yet it's not completely any of those things. The audience is free to project almost anything on to the actress's face as her Alex breathes heavily after the struggle. Close's defiantly handsome visage has lent power to numerous dramatic explosions on screens both big and small as well as broadly comedic mugging. But in Fatal Attraction, more than any of her other projects, she wields her physicality with just as much precision. It's all part of the toolbox for actors at the top of their game. The pose is so memorable and strange, her posture exudes survivor's fatigue and erotic memory. If you think I'm reading too much into so, might Alex herself, since Glenn's body undercuts the potency, ever so slightly, with a hint of a gallows-humor shrug. In short this sequence is incredible cinema/acting.
In the original ending if I recall the story correctly, this shot here would be the last time anyone would see Alex Forrest alive. So what a way to go! But even once reshoots were called, this image, despite its blazing emotional finality, is so flexible in its expressiveness that it's also a plausible even ideal penultimate sequence. Alex Forrest is no longer exactly the woman we once knew the next time we see her, having shed this earlier self's perpetual toggling between reality and fantasy since she was always previously fiddling with moments of emotional lucidity, even self-awareness. In the absence of her whole, though obviously already fragmented, self, we have only the projections of Alex remaining. From here on out we only see the psychopath the Gallaghers demanded she be and the victim Alex convinced herself she was. Nothing of the three-dimensional inbetween.
1:47:09 After Dan returns to the Lieutenant, demanding they finally arrest Alex, we return the new home of the Gallaghers. Since at least 1960 (hello Psycho) it's never a good sign to see a closeup of a shower drain. Beth is drawing a bath and Dan continues talking to the police. It's bad news: They haven't been able to arrest or even find Alex. (I'll give you one guess at to where she is)
Just holler if you need anything.
1:48:46 Dan is back at home and being extra kind to his wife, bringing her aspirin and towels and anything she asks for. He then proceeds to walk around the house and lock all the doors --too late! -- while making Beth a cup of tea.
1:50:22 -The camera work is unbearably patient as Beth fusses around in the foggy bathroom. The act of wiping down a mirror has never felt as dreadfully slow in anticipatory feeling, like a ketchup bottle that taking its time releasing a single drop. You know Alex will be in the mirror... because you've seen a movie before. Again, Glenn Close makes fantastic choices with her body. Alex has come to kill Beth but the pose is all wounded / guarded; Alex's body language says that she's the one who needs protection.
1:51:53 - Delusions and accusations spill out of Alex, as she randomly cuts herself with twitching knife while pinning Beth into the bathroom's corner.
He told me about you. He told me about you. He was very honest. If you weren't so stupid you'd know that. But you're so stupid. You're just stupid. You're a stupid selfish bitch. You're a stupid selfish bitch.
1:52:03 The whole monologue reveals that Alex now believes Beth is the monster who has caused the awful hurt of the past few months. Or does it? The overriding feeling Glenn Close's stirs this disturbing soup with is irrevocably broken mental anguish.
Her final non-violent but dramatic lift of the knife, plays as pure internal exhaustion. The overriding feeling Glenn Close's stirs this disturbing soup with is irrevocably broken mental anguish. It's easy then to read these last repetitive words Alex will ever speak as a self-damning confession (Dan did tell her about Beth from the jump)...
...at least until she starts stabbing at Beth. Oh yes, right, she is so far gone now that it's all Beth's fault!
1:52:11 - We get a weirdly comical cut to Quincy the good boy, who has noticed something is wrong before anyone else has. He begins to lick the overflowing bathwater from the kitchen floor instead of, you know, barking an alarm. Oh, Quincy! As Beth screams on the second floor, the tea kettle begins to whistle, as tea kettles must in cinema, at the precise moment the screaming begins.
As Alex and Beth struggle, Alex's loses control of the knife. Dan finally hears them when lifting the kettle, sparking a mad dash up the stairs to save his wife.
1:52:57 - And we're essentially back to a reprise of their previous struggle with the same exact knife, replacing Alex's apartment with the Gallagher bathroom as battlefield of choice. It's interesting that Glenn flips Alex from scary to scared in her grimacing closeups so suddenly, even though she's the one with the deadly weapon. Ever clumsy Dan falls into the bathtub during the fight.
One has to wonder how long it took to film this scene, which reads as extremely unpredictable in terms of desperate kill-or-be-killed energy, both bloody and bruising (to the movie's credit). I could do without the absurd choice to give Glenn momentary zombie-like contact lenses while drowning --WTF -- but the fight ends quite sadly.
1:54:00- Here you see a perfect choice for the last shot/reverse shot close-ups of our violent one-time lovers; With the fight over Alex is just a sad drowned woman while Dan, distorted through rippling water, is the one looking like monstrous. It's a visual suggestion that blame is not a binary equation in Fatal Attraction; their weekend tryst has been a tragedy for everyone, turning them both into the worst version of themselves. These shots paired would still make a great ending that might have fit within Glenn's dream for her complex character.
Alas...
1:54:56 -Fatal Attraction, for all its unusual strengths, is in the end a Traditional Mainstream Thriller. It has no choice then but to pander, finally, to insatiable audience bloodlust if it wishes to become the true phenomenon it was destined to be. The monster, mysteriously resurrected as movie monsters always are, reemerges from the water for an intended killing blow only to be shot by the wronged wife defending her husband and home.
1:56:00 -Those (like Glenn Close) who don't like the ending, could point to this relieved hug as damning evidence that Fatal Attraction is a deeply conservative and heteronormative diatribe against evil liberated women who tempt faithful husbands away from hearth and home.
1:56:23 -- I take a different view. For me the slow pan to a freeze frame of the nuclear family, looking impossibly ideal and happy (despite all that what we've just witnessed) is too much to receive earnestly. For me it plays less like comforting assurance that True Love will survive now that the Monster is vanquished and veers flirtatiously towards becoming a mocking satire of our reductive need to see the Gallaghers as heroes and Alex as The Sole Problem. Is this a Happy Ending? Is there such a thing after boiled bunnies, broken trust, and violent stabbings? Maybe Adrian Lyne agreed with Glenn Close about the ending people wanted.
Thank you for reading. And thank you to the patient reader who egged this on. I'd love to hear your thoughts on Fatal Attraction as a whole, your takeaway from the finale, it's performance at the Oscars. And while you're at it share your favourite shot from the film, since mine was right here in the final third.
Reader Comments (8)
It was a great movie until the last 20 minutes (maybe the original ending was better).
Close and Douglas were fantastic and Archer was good enough to deserve a nod.
Crazy to think that Glenn was probably 4th.
Peggy Sue - i do think Cher won by a quite comfortable margin but I can't imagine Glenn wasn't in second place. Why do you think 4th? I think Holly was too new to have mustered winner energy, Meryl was a default player (though she's great in that movie), Sally a major indie success,. So i think solidy runner up.
While I didn't enjoy the series as much as I thought I would, especially the ending for Alex, you can't deny Lizzy Caplan's performance.
I'm sure Close was a solid second, as I think she's been a few times.
Hunter third, Kirkland, Streep.
I need an oral history of Kirkland's campaign. She really changed the game (for better or worse)!
Two questions
1 Why doesn't Dan respond to the water drip when he sees it,I know i'd be up there with a "What is going on"
2 Did Beth's foggy mirror wipe jump scare to reveal a villain start here
I think serious cinema lovers would always say the original ending is better and more realistic but I love the last 10 minutes,it's cathartic thrilling and works despite what went before and all 3 play it for all it's worth.
Did The Last Emperor deserve the win over this or should another film have won.
I suspect Glenn was in 2nd place Hunter 3rd then Sally and last was Meryl,it helps to be in a Best Picture nominee.
Nathaniel, thank you for taking the time to so carefully and smartly review this film in such detail. This is a movie I haven't seen since 1987, and not one for which I have fond memories. I remember when I watched it back then, I found it erratic and inconsistent and kind of cheap. Yet your words and insight make me want to revisit it, which I will do this week. That's the power of great writing!
Bafta nominated Douglas for it but not Glenn.