At the level you want it to be: Elba frantically punching a lion.
Category: drama
All the attempts to say anything about abuse gets filtered through the story’s unreal elements, and they reflect back only the most basic ideas on the topic before completely losing the thread.
True crime is not something to be toyed with, and The Staircase, for all the beautiful work put into it, toys with viewers instead of finding the salient truths about the case.
This is ruthlessly proficient entertainment filmmaking, and any human plunked into a theater will be powerless against it.
Deep Water gets bogged down by familiar and pedantic elements of an erotic thriller that feels 65 years old.