IRRESISTIBLE (2006) starts out like dozens of other woman-in-jeopardy movies. But just as all the elements for a tiresomely-familiar tale begin to fall into place, it veers off into unexpected directions and gets really interesting.
Susan Sarandon plays Sophie Hartley, a painter who is trying to work through the grief she feels over her mother's recent death and finish a project for an upcoming book. Strange things begin to happen right away--family photos and toys turn up missing, one of her two daughters reports hearing someone else moving around in the house, and Sophie's hibiscus-print dress has disappeared from her closet. Meanwhile, her husband Craig (Sam Neill), a well-known interior designer, has just gotten an attractive new assistant named Mara (Emily Blunt), at whom he can't seem to help casting an amorous glance now and then.
The Hartleys are invited to a party at the home of Mara and her husband, and when Sophie enters wearing the stunning red evening gown Craig bought for her that day, she's shocked to find Mara wearing the exact same dress. Later, Mara seems to show a strange interest in Sophie, dancing with her, stroking her hair as they talk--it's almost as though she's coming on to her. Sophie really starts getting creeped out when her elderly neighbor reports seeing a woman in a hibiscus-print dress entering her house soon after Craig's keys have gone missing. When Mara comes over for a visit shortly afterward, she's wearing the dress.
Is Mara stalking her, and if so, why? When more family photos and personal items disappear, Sophie begins to fear for her family's safety. She breaks into Mara's house to look around, but is caught and ends up in court, where her story comes out sounding like the ramblings of a mentally-unbalanced woman. At this point, we begin to wonder if maybe Sophie really is losing it. Is she going nuts? Or are Mara and Craig having "an affair" and conspiring to drive her crazy and get rid of her? Defying a restraining order, Sophie obsessively continues to follow Mara to try and find some answers. So, who's stalking who?
Things just keep getting worse, and Sophie's life is on the verge of total disintegration--her older daughter rejects her, her husband treats her like a nutjob while beginning to find Mara "irresistible"--before she finally starts to piece the puzzle together and we realize there's more to the story than we first suspected. Director Ann Turner does a fine job of keeping things moving (although some of the "women's movie" cliche's are still here, such as Sophie and her daughters dancing around the house to an old pop song) and generating lots of suspense, and her screenplay ultimately builds to an exciting climax that is satisfyingly unexpected. There's a dark, almost supernatural feeling to many of the scenes, especially when Sophie begins to doubt her own sanity, and the sequence in which she is attacked by a swarm of wasps in her own house veers close to horror-movie territory.
I was never a big Susan Sarandon fan, but I like her a little more after this--she puts a lot into this character, making her sympathetic and believable throughout. Sam Neill gives his usual reliable performance (which is my usual Sam Neill comment), and Emily Blunt, a very good actress whom I've never seen in anything before, is alternately charming and downright creepy as Mara.
There's a good deal of tension in the final scenes in which Sophie sneaks into Mara's house again and finds herself locked in the basement. It's here that she finally discovers Mara's dark secret--you may see it coming, but I didn't--although it may be too late to do her any good. I won't tell you any more, but I will say that I found it pretty suspenseful. There's an added "The End--Or Is It?" type of scene after the resolution which made me groan at first, but when the fade-out came, the final twist proved to be just cool enough to make me really glad that I'd seen this movie.
