‘Deviant Love’ On Netflix Is A Suspense-Filled Nailbiter That’s Perfect To Watch While Curled Up Under The Covers

Jamie’s going through some tough times, and so she’s returned to the small town where she grew up. In movies, this can mean one of two things: either she’s about to discover the true meaning of Christmas, or something terrible is going to happen. This is where we start in the film Deviant Love, currently streaming on Netflix, and judging by the foreboding score, I don’t think we’re going to be hanging stockings by the fireplace this season. 

Thick with tension, knowing looks and that aforementioned score — which underpins nearly every scene with an omnipresent sense of dread — Deviant Love is a psychological thriller of the first order, where even placing a simple order in a coffee shop seems loaded with ominous portent. It evokes the spirit of so many premium-cable dramas of the 1990s, when every murder mystery had a love story and every love story looked like it could kill you. 

Emma Bell, best known for a recurring role in early seasons of AMC’s The Walking Dead, stars as Jamie. She’s the mother of a rambunctious, surly tween, who’s come to stay in her parents’ home in a storybook Northern California town while recovering from the shock of learning her husband cheated with his assistant. Her parents aren’t the most helpful — her father thinks she should forgive him, her mother has plenty of judgmental comments to share, and her sister alternates between not helping either side — but theoretically, she’s going to get some time to lick her wounds and regroup. She reconnects with old friends from her school days, lamenting the events that have led to her impending divorce, but it’s a meet-cute with Whit — a handsome, friendly man whom she spills coffee all over in their first encounter, that promises to drive the plot.

Whit, played with blue-steel intensity by Nick Ballard, is confident, dashing and effortlessly charming. He immediately disarms Preston, Jamie’s impressed-by-nothing son — and wows her, too, with fantastical stories of his intriguing background and world travels. He’s got some idiosyncrasies — “I’m coming off crazy, aren’t I?”, he asks self-effacingly, after a handful of germophobic comments — but Jamie’s anxious to have someone to talk to that she doesn’t have a long history with, and the cypher-like Whit fits that bill perfectly. Judging by the music, and by his dark, deep-set eyes that could easily see him cast as the devil in another movie — or maybe this one — she shouldn’t be so quick to fall into his arms, no matter how broad the shoulders attached to them are. 

A handful of unexplained flashbacks allude to some sort of childhood trauma for Jamie, and I’d caution anyone for whom that might be a sensitive issue to approach the film with caution or stay away. It’s not exactly clear what happened, but it is clear that she’s had some demons in her life before, and they’re affecting her to this day. Being able to identify who the demons are in her life now might be a matter of life and death.

The cad husband Rick doesn’t take long to show his face in town, seemingly attempting to gaslight Jamie and gloss over the damage he’s done, while demanding access to their son. He’s smarmy, menacing and unapologetic, and Jamie’s family isn’t helping matters by encouraging his presence and her acquiescence. Whit’s suspicious of the husband’s next move, while casting ample doubt on what his own is. It’s clear to see that something terrible is going to happen here, and every time Jamie finds herself alone in the dark at night — which she seems to do a lot — you’re going to wince wondering what happens next.

Just like how the citizens of Metropolis can’t figure out that Clark Kent is just Superman with glasses on, the characters in Deviant Love can be maddeningly dense about what’s happening around them. That’s all part of the fun, though — it’s the kind of film where I kept finding myself pausing so that my exclaimed reactions wouldn’t drown out the next line. “Wait — did they just — why doesn’t she — OH, COME ON!” Good decision-makers don’t make for good suspense sequences, and fortunately for us, this film is light on the former and heavy on the latter. 

I won’t spoil the twists and turns of the roller-coaster plot, because that would ruin the fun of this campy, devilish, guilty-as-sin thriller. It’s not an arthouse drama or deep thinker, but it’s not trying to be. What it is trying to be, it accomplishes with full buy-in and utter commitment from everyone involved: a suspense-filled nailbiter that’s perfect for curling up under a blanket on the couch on a Tuesday night, opening a bottle of wine, and running away from your own problems while watching someone else run headlong into theirs.

Scott Hines is an architect, blogger and internet user who lives in Louisville, Kentucky with his wife, two young children, and a small, loud dog.

Where to stream Deviant Love