Diabolique (1996)

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

Diabolique is set in Pennsylvania at the St. Anselm's boarding school for boys which is owned by Mia Baran (Isabelle Adjani), however her husband Guy (Chazz Palminteri) who runs the school treats her like dirt & cheats on her. Mia & a teacher named Nicole Horner (Sharon Stone) whom is one of Guy's many lovers devise a plan to kill him & make it look like an accident, the plan is to drown him & then throw him in the school pool where he will be found & to the police his death will seem like a simple drowning. However after a few days the body isn't found so Mia orders the dirty pool drained when Nicole 'accidently' drops her keys into it, once drained Guy's body is not there. Was Guy dead? Did someone find out there plan? Who knows...Directed by Jeremiah Chechik this is a remake of the black and white French film Les Diaboliques (1955) which itself was based on the novel 'Celle Qui N'Etait Plus' by Pierre Boileau & Thomas Narcejac & I thought was a fairly lazy & plodding mystery thriller with truly one of the worst twist endings ever. The humourless & slow moving script by Don Ross takes ages to do what the average episode of Columbo took about 10 minutes to, to show someone committing the so-called perfect murder. Then it switches to creepy thriller mode as the body vanishes from where the murderers left it & seemingly has come back to life before it all falls apart with one of the worst, most predictable & frankly unlikable twist endings ever. I can't continue my review any further without massive spoilers which will give away the ending so beware, anyway I hate the fact that Mia & Nicole suddenly turn into the heroes of the piece when they were just as bad as Guy since in the case of Mia she planned to kill him in cold blood & Nicole was prepared to trick Mia & ultimately kill her if the plan had succeeded. They were really unlikable character's to begin with so this horrible ending where they become the heroes by killing Guy which is basically exactly the same thing which they set out to do in the first place just grated my nerves. Also, if Mia was feeling so guilty why did she seem almost redeemed at the end? She still ended up killing Guy anyway so why the miraculous change of heart? Also, what about Nicole? She still was part of some scheme where someone was always going to die, be it either Mia or Guy. The ending is just so misjudged, it makes no sense with the rest of the context of the film, it's horribly acted & it's utterly predictable. In fact I guessed how this would end within 30 minutes & I was absolutely right in just about every detail. A really horrible film with an even worse ending, one to avoid.Director Chechik has made some really, really awful films & after this mess & his subsequent big screen adaptation of The Avengers (1998) which is considered one of the worst films ever made Hollywood thankfully hasn't let him anywhere near a film camera since. This guy should be directing traffic rather than films. This is blandly shot in dull autumnal colours which give it forgettable look. I also have to mention the acting, especially by the two female leads Stone & Adjani who are simply terrible. I hated their character's, I hated their acting & thought they were two of the worst performances by leading actors in a Hollywood flick I've ever seen. In the UK this is rated '18' meaning no-one under that age can watch it, I have no idea why as there's no violence worth mentioning, no nudity or sex & it's devoid of any action or excitement.Technically the film is alright but it's flat, dull & blandly filmed. There's no real style here & it's not a film I will remember in any way apart from that terrible ending. As I've said I think the acting by the two leads is simply awful.Diaboliques is a slow moving, utterly predictable thriller with a horrible ending that didn't do anything for me. One to avoid. This probably would have worked better as a 30 minute Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode or maybe even as an obscure black and white French film from the 50's...

Occasionally only, I should make clear. So bloody awful that not for the first time do I wish there was a minus rating on IMDb. Picked this up in a remainder bin for a couple of dollars and figured I had loved the French original from the fifties so how bad could the remake be? Might be a curiosity item and the cast was pretty stellar - for one the magnificent and rarely misplaced Kathy Bates was in it.Was I in for a shock. Nothing, absolutely nothing, worked in this movie. The plot, the minescule amount that was there of it, was drivel. There was no character development AT ALL.Some awful special effects (get those white eyes on the corpse, folks)and a supposedly creepy atmosphere that makes one chortle every time the usually lovely Isabelle gapes in a mirror at herself. Doesn't everyone look in a mirror when they're frightened? I know it's the first thing I think of, as I climb out of bed after a nightmare - I look in a mirror to make myself feel better.More threads going nowhere than you could count in a ragged old sweater. The lesbian sub-plot that never quite makes it. And it should. It is a key element in this woeful adaptation. Sharon Stone mincing around in an oddly wired looking walk with trampy tight clothes and really high heels and the strangest lipstick that doesn't leave a mark on her frequently lit cigarettes (she's a school teacher in a private school, Catholic, yeah that's believable). And on and on. How does one get funding for such a travesty, thirty million dollars, I believe??? And the overacting of Chazz and Isabelle... I could write a book on that alone. There should be a law against this kind of thing. 1 out of 10 for what I don't know, only that there isn't a zero rating on IMDb. And as I said, we need these movies, just to make us appreciate even the mediocre ones.

That stunning genetic lottery winner known as Isabelle Adjani (in one of her best contemporary roles) stars as the push over trophy wife of a posh private school headmaster (played by that ever perfectly sinister Chazz Palmintery) and Sharon Stone plays a vixen of a teacher (and perhaps one-time lover of the headmaster) within the school who inspires Adjani's character to conspire to have her husband bumped off. Kathy Bates in the detective hot on their tails ones the allegedly crime has been committed and from here on, it is a game of Whodunit and where-is-the-body?! Brilliant performances by all the afore mentioned actors, if only the script were as solid as they are and were in this film.

Sharon Stone is at it again! In "Diabolique" she helps a murder. Mia Baran(Isabelle Adjani) and Nicole Horner(Stone) conspire to rid a school of a headmaster, Guy Baran(Chazz Palminteri). They drown him in a bathtub, then weigh him down with a keg. A bathtub? They could do better than that. That death-look was pretty real to me, until he removed the contacts. And Sharon look really good wearing the leopard print bra. Black, red or blue would be nice, but they wouldn't be "wild" enough for the movie. Mia had a bad heart, and her heart was giving out in a few scenes. Of course Guy and Nicole would be the real conspirators until Guy got to greedy for his own good. And he met his end to a pitchfork. Not just his right eye died, the fake drowning should have been planned better to me I think. This movie didn't reach the standards in the box office like "Basic Instinct" did. To me, it was just a toner version without all the blood. And it was still good to me. Rating 2.5 out of 5 stars.