My Buddy James Made Me Watch Fatal Attraction With Him and Now I Have to Thank James for Saving My Future Marriage

Let me say one thing right off the bat: I would never, ever, cheat on my future wife.

I swear adultery, like, wasn’t even on the table for me before, but now that I’ve seen Fatal Attraction, it’s not only off the table, it’s out of the whole entire dining room. I will never cheat. Never. Definitely was never going to prior to seeing Fatal Attraction, but still, super definitely won’t now.

Last weekend my friend and roommate James poked his head into our living room and asked me if I had seen Fatal Attraction before. I said I hadn’t. He grinned and said he was downloading it at that exact moment, and we were gonna watch it. I said okay, because James is a fun hang and has fun taste in entertainment. What I was totally oblivious to, however, is that James was really doing this to save my future marriage. It’s the nicest thing he’s ever done for me. James, thank you so much for making me watch the 1987 domestic thriller Fatal Attraction alone with you on a Friday night.

Fatal Attraction stars Michael Douglas (one of James’ favorite actors, which I suspect is because they look somewhat similar) and Glenn Close. It’s about how Michael Douglas cheats on his already super-attractive wife (Anne Archer) with Glenn Close, who is also attractive in this movie but more attractive in the way that a witch is attractive when she puts on a youthful disguise, if that makes sense. Anyway, Michael Douglas tries to sever ties with Glenn Close and end the affair, but turns out, Glenn Close is a psychopath and won’t let him go that easy. She does all kinds of crazy psycho things to keep Michael Douglas in her life, and to say that things go “bananas” would be an understatement. Fatal Attraction is wack. It’s also excellent.

Reading that plot summary now, Fatal Attraction probably sounds like every Lifetime movie ever, and there’s a good reason for that. The movie was actually the highest-grossing movie worldwide in 1987; everyone saw it, and certainly every couple saw it together. There are lots of testimonies out there about how Fatal Attraction ended up saving a lot of marriages and other romances because its depiction of infidelity was so damaging and horrific. It sparked tons of conversations and was kind of the hot-button, trendy movie of that year. Naturally, that popularity would spark tons of imitators. We see a few copycats in theaters every year (Obsessed, The Perfect Guy, When the Bough Breaks), but we see them mostly on channels like Lifetime, which have banked their entire sustainability plans on bonkers domestic horror movies like this.

But, having seen a few too many of those movies myself, I have to say that Fatal Attraction is the best of the lot. It was well-received 30 years ago—it was actually nominated for Best Picture, and Glenn Close and Anne Archer also saw acting nominations for that year’s Academy Awards—and the acclaim holds up. It’s supremely creepy, genuinely intense, and wears a thin sheen of style that elevates the absurd premise to a surprising level of plausibility. When it was over, James and I went all over our house turning on the lights and checking the corners for a simmering, makeup-smeared Glenn Close. It was totally unnerving. James now knows what my scream sounds like.

(Bonus: Fatal Attraction also made James and I better friends, because I now believe with the utmost confidence that we can watch just about any movie together. This is because Fatal Attraction is the hardest of rated-R movies. The first 20 minutes involve two sex scenes (adulterous, of course) that are so raunchy and ravenous that to keep silent during them would be more uncomfortable than drawing attention to the action in front of you. James and I ended up talking about Michael Douglas’ acting prime as Glenn Close was going down on him in an elevator.)

Regardless, heed that for movie-quality reasons alone, there are lots of reasons to watch Fatal Attraction. The real perk, though, is that after you watch this movie you’re going to enjoy a healthy, faithful marriage for the rest of your life. Game over, mistresses of the world. Men everywhere are going to start watching Fatal Attraction, and when they do, they’re going to have the worst-case scenario of their extramarital sex right in front of them, and you know what they’ll think when they see a bloody Glenn Close try to make out with Mikey Douglas? Not worth it. Definitely not worth it. And again, I was never going to have extramarital sex! Wasn’t even on my radar! But I super won’t have it now. Thanks again, James.