Lizzy Caplan and Joshua Jackson Photo: Paramount+Adrian Lyne ’s steamy, scary, sordid “Fatal Attraction” was an era-defining film, a philanderer’s horror feature, an AIDS allegory and a palliative for those left reeling by campaigns for sexual equality.
How were we supposed to read Glenn Close ’s Alex Forrest, after all, other than as the successful single woman as a knife-wielding monster, i.e., the end result of feminism?
Fatal Attraction Begins Sunday, Paramount+It was a movie that got a lot more mileage out of controversy than quality, however, and while the new production of “Fatal Attraction” is part of a seemingly desperate effort by Paramount to remake its old theatrical titles for TV (“The Italian Job,” “Flashdance,” “The Parallax View”), co-developer and writer Alexandra Cunningham ’s first-rate reimagining is far more complex, engrossing and adult than the 1987 original.
And it shows that there was much more to be mined out of James Dearden ’s Oscar-nominated screenplay than Mr. Lyne probably ever imagined.