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Tilda Swinton scares me. I don’t know what it is about her, but whenever I see her on a talk show or red carpet, her ever-changing androgynous appearance and odd quotes just seem out of place for such an accomplished actress. On screen, however, Tilda Swinton is marvelous. Shaping her appearance role-to-role, Tilda must be a director’s dream, able to seamlessly be molded into any character (just look at her most famous role as the White Witch in the Chronicles of Narnia series versus her Oscar-winning performance in Michael Clayton). Admiring her filmography, I was excited to see Swinton in her most normal looking role as a mother of two boys and a daughter in 2001’s The Deep End. However, less than ten minutes in I knew that her stay-at-home mom appearance was just a red herring for a far more interesting plot. But I should have known that. After all, Tilda Swinton is the star.

The Deep End is a drama first, then a thriller about a mother, Margaret Hall (Swinton), racing against the clock to cover up the murder of a sleazy gay club-owner, Darby Reese (Josh Lucas), she assumes her young son, Beau (Jonathan Tucker), committed. However, when a sex tape between Beau and Darby surfaces as a form of blackmail to be turned over to the police, Margaret not only has evidence to dispose of, but also has to raise $50,000 to pay off a Russian thug, Alek (Goran Visnjic), before the snooping investigators unveil the truth.

Like how you measure the speed of a car on a odometer, in this type of movie you usually meter the stakes by how much time is left for the protagonist to cover his or her tracks. In The Deep End, though, you judge the time left to the climax by how much sanity Margaret has left in the increasingly loopy plot.

When you stumble upon a body impaled by a ship’s anchor and suspect your son of murder, within the half-a-week-ish timeline of the film, wouldn’t you ask your son if he did it? I just couldn’t get over this illogical hump, especially because the character of Margaret is quite intelligent and emotionally connected to her children. I won’t spoil for you if the son committed the murder or not, but if you are expecting a wild plot twist from the lack of communication, then maybe this isn’t the movie for you.

While easy to write off for the multiple unnatural coincidental events that get the plot going, the strong acting and grounded dialogue make The Deep End worthy to check out.

Swinton dives into the juicy role of Margaret, balancing her day of driving her daughter to ballet and dragging a dead body into the middle of a lake with finesse; avoiding an easily laughable performance if the role went to an actress of lesser-caliber. Swinton also has a surprising amount of chemistry with the compassionate baddie-turned-good guy Alek, played by E.R. star Visnjic. In a lazily written role, Visnjic elevates the material, making the sudden change of heart easier to swallow, becoming likable to the audience for the final act of the film, reaching its full emotional impact.

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