MovieChat Forums > Basic Instinct (1992) Discussion > What happened to erotic thrillers like t...

What happened to erotic thrillers like this?


There were a few in the 2000s like Original Sin, Unfaithful, In the Cut, and Femme Fatale. Then it seems it just dissipated. It's a shame the closest we got were those abominable 'Fifty Shades of Grey' movies. Although I guess Gone Girl was kind of in that direction and The Handmaiden was awesome.

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The self-appointed PC Police have decided they are going to prevent other people from watching what they think is offensive to themselves.

BTW: I didn't think the Fifty Shades movies were that bad but that's just my opinion.

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Perhaps the rise in internet porn helped kill it too. Why pay to see it in theaters when all one needs is a computer?

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BTW: I didn't think the Fifty Shades movies were that bad but that's just my opinion.

Well... that's a weird opinion. They were freaking awful.

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Adrian Lyne, who did Fatal Attraction and 9 1/2 Weeks (and the brilliant Jacob’s Ladder although that’s a different genre), is making his first film in 18 years, it’s coming out later this year and stars Ben Affleck and Ana De Armas, and it’s an erotic thriller.

Hopefully it’ll kick off a new trend for adult thrillers, but given that woke Hollywood is doing everything it can to stop good films being made I’m not so sure, and as someone else pointed out - internet porn has killed off a lot of the appeal of steamy thrillers, and possibly TV shows like Game Of Thrones have made actors’ genitals mainstream.

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I think it's just laziness. A movie like the Handmaiden has a lot of stuff that's "woke" (female protagonists, lesbian romance, liberation subtext). But because it's a period piece in a foreign language, I think that right there would halt it even being considered by an American studio. It's a wonder that even a pro like David Fincher got Gone Girl off the ground.

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I was rewatching Basic Instinct and Fatal Attraction few months ago and was wondering the same thing.

You know what had that 90’s erotic thriller vibe to me; that What If show starring Renée Zellweger on Netflix.

It wasn’t particularly good, but it was fun to binge watch and it and it had that erotic thriller feel to it. Maybe it’s just me who thought so, I don’t know.

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They had their moment like any other subgenre - they kept making them for video but they just got cheaper and more ridiculous.

I don't think it's anything to do with PC-police etc., trends just moved on.

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Yeah the "PC Police"...Is that what's stopped erotic content from appearing in cable and streaming services altogether?

Hollywood, by and large, has largely abandoned adult fare due to increasing corporate conservatism; wanting to maintain the safe bottom line by churning out infantile, superhero dreck targeted at teen boys.
Even a Scorcese film, with stalwarts like Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in its cast, had difficulties being bankrolled by major studios, and ended up on Netflix.

That being said, the erotic thriller sub-genre was a rather brief trend, mostly consigned to home video. Cinema releases were far and wide after about the mid 1990's, particularly after the critical lashing and conservative outrage provoked by Showgirls, and the NC17 rating.

America has always had a more prudish attitude towards sex, and along with distributors and retailers refusing to carry NC17 rated fare, the erotic thriller, and movies with generally strong sexual content, were always seen as less bankable by major studios.
Basic Instinct were only part of a brief chic trend.

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The recent ones have been rather crappy and bad quality... Perfect Stranger, Obsessed, The Boy Next Door...

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They by and large have stopped making romantic comedies as well. If they do get made they'll have some shoehorned political agenda in them.

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'They have stopped making romantic comedies."

Where'd you get that idea? They're still making those.

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Probably because most of those flopped, along with the likes of Mercy, Killing Me Softly, etc, in the early 00s. When BI2 bombed it showed this sub-genre had run its course commercially; with Skinemax exiting the game they'll probably be rarer in the Americlown market. Thankfully France, Italy and Spain are still dipping into it, but with Coronachan around, who knows if they'll still be dipping (know what I'm sayin)

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Adrian Lyne's got a new one coming out with Ben Affleck and Ana De Armas. Let's see how that one goes.

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