Deep Water takes a drastic departure from the original book’s ending, with the differences creating a major change in the overall story. Fatal Attraction director Adrian Lyne returns from a 20-year hiatus to helm Hulu’s 2022 film Deep Water, an erotic psychological thriller depicting the tumultuous marriage of Vic and Melinda Van Allen. Starring Gone Girl's Ben Affleck and No Time to Die's Ana de Armas, Deep Water was received with primarily negative reviews, with much of the criticism being attributed to the film’s abrupt final act. Here's how the Deep Water ending is different from the Deep Water book.
Deep Water isn’t Adrian Lyne’s first book adaptation, with some of his best-known erotic dramas like Indecent Proposal and 9½ Weeks also being inspired by notable literature. This time around, Lyne brings to life Patricia Highsmith’s 1957 novel, Deep Water, which was remarkable at the time for breaking gender stereotypes. Like the film, the Deep Water novel depicted the strange agreement in which Melinda is allowed to take lovers as long as she doesn’t break up their family. While Vic puts on a public mask of indifference to his wife’s affairs, he finally snaps and begins to kill Melinda’s (Ana de Armas) lovers as the stakes for the couple’s twisted mind-games grow higher.
While the underlying story leading to the Deep Water ending remains the same, including Vic’s strange obsession with snails, the 2022 movie notably diverges from the Deep Water book in the last act. The major change has a significant impact on the overall motivations of Melinda and Vic Van Allen’s characters, as well as a completely new take on what the future holds for the couple. Here’s a breakdown of how Deep Water’s book and movie endings differ, and why director Adrian Lyne decided to make such a substantial change.
Deep Water’s Film Ending Explained
Hulu’s Deep Water ending occurs after Vic has murdered Tony, Melinda’s latest lover, and gone to the gorge to better hide his body. Melinda finds Tony’s licenses in a box of Vic’s snails, then seemingly contacts Deep Water character Don Wilson, a new neighbor suspicious of Vic, to follow him. When Don arrives, he sees Vic tampering with Tony’s body, so he immediately drives away in his car in an attempt to expose the truth. Deep Water then sees Vic chase Don down on his mountain bike, riding into the middle of the road so that Don swerves off the side of a cliff to his death. Upon returning home, Vic finds Melinda sitting on the stairs after a quick switch with her character – the last time she was seen, their daughter Trixie had thrown her packed suitcase into the pool. Vic and Melinda smile at each other and pretend nothing happened, with Deep Water ending as Melinda burns Tony’s licenses, effectively covering up his murder so that she and Vic can maintain their typical suburban couple appearance. However, the Deep Water book ending is different.
Deep Water Book Ending Explained
The majority of Deep Water’s film is faithful to the book, which includes the overarching storyline in which Melinda suspects Vic of killing her lovers, with her accusing him of sociopathy and Vic reveling in getting away with his crimes. The stories take a significant departure once Tony is introduced, as Deep Water’s book sees Vic offer Melinda a divorce so that she can run away with Tony, only for Vic to murder him. Like in Deep Water’s movie, Vic and Melinda grow closer together after Tony’s disappearance, suggesting Melinda wants the couple to start over. However, Vic suspects that she’s only acting so courteously as a ruse fabricated to make Vic confess to killing Charlie and Tony, with her final plan being a setup for Vic and Don to arrive at the quarry at the same time.
Just as he does in the last act of Deep Water’s ending, Don finds Vic with bloodstains as he checks on Tony’s body, with Don immediately fleeing to find the police. The major change in the ending for Deep Water’s book sees Vic return home to Melinda in a rage, where he violently strangles her to death. At the same moment, Don arrives at their house with a policeman, who takes Vic away to pay for his crimes. With Don alive, Melinda deceased after planning to send Vic to jail, and Vic being caught for his murders, the bleak ending of Deep Water’s book leaves the two main characters with a much different relationship than in the movie.
Why Deep Water’s Director Changed The Ending
The ending for Deep Water’s movie is oddly much more twisted, as it makes both Vic and Melinda villains in their own right, playing equally dangerous mind games that bring them closer together. In Patricia Highsmith's book, Melinda was never complicit in Vic’s crimes as he was in her affairs, which left her as the more morally sympathetic character. Adrian Lyne’s change makes her just as twisted as Vic, suggesting she equally enjoys the madness of their dynamic and sees that Vic murdering her boyfriends is his way of proving he loves her and is passionate, which is what she had been longing for in their marriage. Vic and Melinda have now decided to hold their marriage together by virtue of being complicit in one another’s sins, which has become one of the only ways in which their passion is renewed.
Adrian Lyne’s ending change to Deep Water's erotic thriller was also concocted to send a disturbing message unusual for his previous erotic thrillers in that the madness may never end. The final scene of Deep Water repeats the opening scene, though they’re not technically the same exact shots – while Melissa is wearing the same outfit and repeats the same line, “Nothing,” in both, Vic is in brand-new garb. As a film discussing the masks that some married couples may wear to keep appearances in suburbia, it’s no surprise that Lyne used these scenes to bookend Deep Water, as it suggests the pair’s typical suburban life they often declare to be “boring” is cyclical in nature. At the end of the Disney 2022 movie, Deep Water, the couple’s marriage is business as usual, albeit with a new revival in passion through Vic’s murders. Viewers are left wondering how long this has been going on and how much longer this cycle will continue.
When addressing his change to Deep Water’s book ending in Disney's 2022 movie, director Adrian Lyne explained that he wanted to leave viewers with the notion that this madness will only continue for the Van Allens past the final scene, possibly until the point that they eventually kill each other (via Collider). In the book, Vic isn’t sexually interested in Melinda, which is another major change that Lyne made in the movie, as Ben Affleck’s character is often seen trying to pursue Ana de Armas' character. With Fatal Attraction director Adrian Lyne rewriting Deep Water's final act to make the two get off on their disturbing actions equally, she adds a level of complexity to their characters in that they remain in love, but it’s unclear how far they’ll push their new dynamic until it eventually reflects the book's ending.
Deep Water Movie vs. Book: What Else Changed
There are always bound to be changes from book to screen, and the Deep Water ending faced the most drastic one, but other parts of the book were also left out or tweaked to make a more cohesive narrative for the Hulu movie. While both the book and the movie start off the same, with Ben Affleck's Vic "joking" that he killed one of Melinda's exes to her current lover at a party, the movie takes its time in confirming that Ben Affleck's character Vic is actually the cold-blooded killer he claims to be compared to its novel counterpart. In fact, McRae (the ex that Vic was referring to) does appear in the book, though he isn't missing. Rather, he's found dead in the novel due to a gunshot wound. However, Vic didn't actually kill McRae, who was found dead in his apartment. The real killer was found instead, much to Vic's disappointment. After the news that he was missing, Melinda was largely avoided by her lovers, but once he was found, things heated up for her again. In addition, the Deep Water book was written in the late 1950s, meaning it takes place during that time period. The movie, however, is set in the current day rather than in a bygone time.
The character of Grant (played by Lil Rel Howrey of Get Out and Free Guy) is also not in the book. Instead, he is a character named Horace, and he and Vic have many more interactions than they do in the movie. In addition to this, Vic's characterization is changed from that of his novel counterpart, as he doesn't seem to mind people discussing Melinda's affairs with him since it makes him look like the pitiful husband. As well, Vic didn't get rich off of a computer chip in the book — he was born into money and owned a small publishing company. All in all, these minor changes from the book don't affect Deep Water's plot, except for the ending.