Young Douglas’s implausible, lighter wig looks cheaply improvised despite the film’s budget.
Cellphones would radically change misunderstandings, including the hospital call, and may reshape the remake.
Modern home cameras would alter the concealment and household intrusions.
Cruelty to the cat and dog is painful even as deliberate evidence that both spouses are monstrous; escape for the pets is wished for.
Joint Christmas after separation is considered torturous for children and often unwanted by one parent; Oliver also uses it tactically to regain residence.
The foot encounter is considered lame and overlong despite its later payoff; whether it was completed is questioned.
Gavin is theorized to engineer the conflict for career advantage; losing the client at the end and his actual advice challenge the conspiracy.
The Roses house is said not to rank among twenty desirable movie homes; seventeen initial alternatives and numerous additions are discussed, explicitly unranked despite initial numbering.
The dog should truly have become pâté to fulfill the darkness is argued against needing equal culpability and preserving fear over reality; a test-audience insert reportedly established survival, perhaps to protect the fatal ending.
Desirable movie-home alternatives: Father of the Bride; Home Alone; The Royal Tenenbaums; Something’s Gotta Give beach house; Parasite
Desirable movie-home alternatives: The Thomas Crown Affair 1999 vacation house and brownstone; The Game; The Holiday cottage. Numbering explicitly does not mean ranking; the California Holiday house is criticized.
Desirable movie-home alternatives: Call Me by Your Name villa; Phantom Thread townhouse; Cameron’s Ferris Bueller house; Mr. & Mrs. Smith before destruction; Boogie Nights; restored Notebook house; Godfather Part II Lake Tahoe house; Singin’ in the Rain villa
Desirable movie-home alternatives: Ex Machina; Saltburn; Downton Abbey; Ordinary People; Amityville Horror. The count is called twenty despite side suggestions.
Desirable movie-home alternatives: It’s Complicated; American Gigolo beach house; Wall Street Hamptons house; Tony Stark’s Iron Man mansion; Anatomy of a Fall house; To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday Nantucket house
Desirable movie-home alternatives: Fatal Attraction; The Big Chill; Sleeping with the Enemy beach house and later hiding-place house; Unfaithful house and admired apartment; Forrest Gump
Two omitted scenes are defended: Barbara killing Oliver’s plants motivates the sawn heels, and Oliver heating her bedroom explains her late-film sweat and mutual discomfort.
