Paramount+’s Lifeless Fatal Attraction Remake Makes a Poor Case for Its Own Existence

Love it or hate it, the 1987 film Fatal Attraction is one of the most popular and recognizable movies ever made. A global blockbuster, it essentially launched the erotic thriller craze that would dominate multiplexes for the next decade and made a household name out of its star, Glenn Close. Yes, there’s plenty to complain about when it comes to a movie whose central theme often boils down to “bitches be crazy,” but it’s hard to ignore its propulsive, electric feel. (Even though Close was absolutely correct to complain about the revised ending that essentially turned her character into a slasher movie villain.)  

In an entertainment landscape that’s obsessed with mining existing intellectual property for reboots, remakes, and spinoffs, it’s honestly kind of amazing that no one has attempted to take another run at Fatal Attraction before right now. But as Omar Little once said on The Wire, if you come at the king, you best not miss. And Paramount+’s new eight-part Fatal Attraction is a miss on almost every level: It’s a modern-day update that has shockingly little that’s new to say about its characters, an erotic thriller that’s often painfully unsexy, a bland murder mystery that never feels particularly urgent, and features an all-time clanger of an ending. (Its final twist is, no joke, so wildly dumb that it almost completely undoes any good work the rest of the series manages to do in terms of centering mental health and female agency.)

Truly, the best thing I can tell you is that at least no bunnies are harmed in the making of this series.

To its credit, ​this Fatal Attraction at least makes a nominal attempt ​​to expand and complicate the world of the original film, casting Dan Gallagher (Joshua Jackson) and Alex Forrest (Lizzy Caplan) as professional colleagues in the Los Angeles criminal justice system and attempting to tease out their stories across a pair of dual timelines that encompass both the lead up to their affair and the fallout that’s still taking place fifteen years later. The story is honest about both the pervasiveness of Dan’s Nepobaby white male privilege and Alex’s long history of trauma, digging into not only her damaged relationship with her terrible father but several boyfriends as well. Yet, the show is so determined to lampshade every larger piece of social commentary that its larger character beats have little nuance or subtlety. (Strap in for a lot of extended quotes from the works of Carl Jung is what I’m saying.)

The series opens with Dan’s release from prison, now on parole after serving fifteen years for Alex’s murder. But even as he tries to reconnect with ex-wife Beth (Amanda Peet) and now college-aged daughter Ellen (Alyssa Jirrels), he’s recruiting his retired detective BFF Mike (Toby Huss) to help him dig into the truth of Alex’s death and clear his name. Simultaneously, the series flashes back to somewhere around 2008-ish, where we see the beginnings of Dan and Alex’s affair, initially sparked by his upset over not getting the promotion to a judgeship he was expecting, and tracks its descent into something dark and ugly. 

The eight episodes regularly jump between time periods, with little to differentiate between them outside of poor Joshua Jackson’s messy hairstyle in the present. (And the occasional blue-toned overlay.) The modern-day sequences are dull, deflating, and weirdly preachy—a lot of people want to tell Dan how terrible they thought his attempt to victim blame a dead woman is at extreme length—so much so that they manage to rob whatever momentum might be found in the story elsewhere. The flashback sequences consist of so little real material that we’re forced to spend whole episodes watching the same events play out from multiple characters’ POVs, a twist that puts us in the heads of everyone from Alex herself to Dan’s wife Beth, and several of their in-laws and friends. And there’s also a weird third narrative thread, that follows Ellen as she writes her college thesis on Jung and his mistress/collaborator Toni Wolff. The show’s deeply unsubtle attempt to tie the texts and lectures she’s reading together as some sort of broader explanation of why Alex is the way she is is straight-up laughable at times. (No shade on Jirrels though, who is an arresting performer in her own right.) 

Bizarrely paced and overlong, the series’ story—no matter which timeline we’re talking about—lacks anything resembling urgency or transgressiveness, and even the sex scenes (which are surprisingly limited given that the whole hook of this show is ostensibly that it’s about an illicit affair) lack heat. It’s not that Jackson and Caplan don’t have chemistry—they do—but their reasons for wanting one another often read as sad or tragic rather than desperate or inevitable. And, for all that the series promises to give us a new take on one of cinema’s most famous villains, this Alex Forrest isn’t all that different from her big-screen counterpart. We spend more time with her, to be sure—but at the end of the day, any truths about her come prepackaged in neat boxes, and lack the rawness and intensity that has always been a hallmark of this character. 

Not everything about Fatal Attraction is awful—Caplan’s performance is far better than the material she’s given deserves, and her chameleon-like ability to shift between confidence, vulnerability, and rage makes it clear why she was cast. Jackson is solid as both versions of Dan—one with the world at his feet and one who’s lost everything. (We always love to see the Dawson’s Creek alumni network thriving.) And former Halt and Catch Fire star Huss may be the only person involved in this project who’s actually having a good time. (His Mike is hands down the show’s stealth MVP.)  But in a television landscape that’s full to bursting with other prequels, spinoffs, and reboots of famous and familiar properties, you’ve got to give viewers something better than this tepid take that doesn’t seem to understand what made the original film so memorable in the first place. Men the world over quaked when Alex Forrest first told Dan Gallagher she was not going to be ignored. But this Fatal Attraction doesn’t deserve your attention. 

Fatal Attraction premieres on Sunday, April 30 on Paramount+.

Lacy Baugher Milas is the Books Editor at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter @LacyMB.

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