Fatal Attraction (2023)

Sure, the pacing is a bit uneven episode to episode and some smaller storylines feel slightly rushed. However, the daring narrative choices and arresting performances led by Caplan make this series a psychological adventure that is more than worthy of your undivided attention.

Despite the casting — and working from screenwriter James Dearden’s original script to create the expansive world in this adaptation — the first two episodes of “Fatal Attraction” are a drag. ... Yet, as the third episode begins, the series’ pace, tone and direction all meet harmoniously, making for a wildly enjoyable remaining six episodes.

This is a show that acknowledges its source material, right down to the slashed font going into the credits. But it crawls along, and the characters act through the haze of noir-murk that has come to signify big dollar budgets, and instead has viewers wondering whether the cat stepped on the remote.

It’s fine if unremarkable. The series basically takes the plot of the 1987 film and elongates and attempts to deepen it with winks and nods to the movie.

Any of “Fatal Attraction’s” attempts to put Alex’s choices into perspective are limp and fleeting, especially compared to the full tapestry of the Gallagher family. That Caplan holds her own without anything comparable is a testament to what she’s able to add that remains unspoken.

In this Fatal Attraction, Alex Forrest may not be (so) problematic, but that only makes her even more of a narrative and storytelling problem than the show and Caplan together can adeptly handle.

Anchored by arresting performances from Joshua Jackson and Lizzy Caplan, Fatal Attraction is a solid thriller about a man felled by hubris and handsome-white-guy privilege — but the show undermines its entire message with an infuriatingly dumb ending.

It’s Gabriel Byrne’s “In Therapy” meets “Law and Order: Special Bad-Girlfriends Unit.” On such soap-operatic terms, the series is entertaining. ... Whenever the TV producers throw a bone to the original film script, I found myself begging them to quit. Their contempt for the original material shows in their dull nods to the listless sex scenes and a sad rabbit cameo.

Jackson and Caplan tackle the iconic roles with passion and put their own stamp on them, but the pacing and the lack of sparks make this fizzle. I lasted through five episodes and walked away with the clear feeling it needed tightening.

It is competently made and nice to look at, it has a knockoff version of a languorous Southern California vibe, and Caplan and Jackson are both engaging. ... What’s missing is the metabolism, the transgressive energy and — at least in the context of its time — the glossy sexiness that the director Adrian Lyne brought to the film. The thing you wonder as you watch the series isn’t why they made the changes they did, but why they bothered making the show at all.

Sometimes a dusty cultural artifact is meant to be appreciated as just that, a product of its time that anyone is free to embrace or dismiss. Instead, this one has been tidied up, making the attraction feel a lot less fatal.

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.

Fatal Attraction was very much a product of its time, so an attempt to cash in on the title – as Paramount+ does with a new version – absolutely needed to reconsider and reimagine the material. Yet the eight-part series awkwardly draped over its bones is a beyond-busy murder mystery, one that – with apologies to one of the film’s signature lines – can easily be ignored.

Paramount+’s Fatal Attraction takes all the thrills out of the classic thriller, with leaden flash-forwards and stilted dialogue.

Without any strong sense of how it wants to present female victimhood and aggression, this show does little with the erotic-thriller material it borrows from. A boiled bunny is better than a cold fish.

It’s tonally uneven, bulked up with Jungian filler, still ultimately all about the man, not as sexy as the original, and, on its own terms, just as sexist.

While this so-so reboot has nothing new to say about sexual politics, it may yet redefine what is meant by barking mad.

This series perpetuates a damaging myth and one that doesn’t need an eight-part, hour-long prestige retelling. No matter how strong the casting, how compelling the plot, and how coveted the original IP, “Fatal Attraction” remains entertaining enough but rotten at its core.

The new ending offers no improvement over Lyne’s ruthlessly efficient original and the bloated journey to get there is rarely more satisfying. Despite several exceptional performances, this Fatal Attraction can’t find the desired middle ground between voyeuristic thrills and psychological nuance.

Despite the fine performances and the first-rate production values, “Fatal Attraction” rides completely off the rails in those final episodes, leaving us with nothing more than the urge to revisit the original to see how it holds up and to completely forget about this misfire.

The series version of Fatal Attraction lacks the danger and tension the film had, and there isn’t enough story to compensate for expanding the two hour movie into an eight-hour series.

As a remaking of an essential erotic thriller, there’s not much thrill to be found.

This is a soulless, styleless, and mostly sexless miniseries that does nothing besides spend eight hours posturing.