Clarissa Mora The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Roy Hart If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Ava-Grace Willis Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Jerrie It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

sol **SPOILERS** Decent remake of the French 1955 film noir classic of the same title about two women, wife and mistress, planning the murder of their both sleazy and ape-like husband and lover that ends up boomeranging on both of them.In this modernized version of "Diabolique" the story takes place in Pennsylvania not France with headmistress and owner of an all boys private school Mia Baran, Isabelle Adjani, having her fill of taking all the abuse she can from her caveman like husband Guy, Chezz Palminteri. Mia gets together with Guy's also abused mistress, who got her left eye blackened by him, Nicole Horner played by an ultra sexy looking Sharon Stone who's also a teacher at the boys school. The two abused women plan to finally do away with the creep and make his death look like a drowning accident. It takes a while for the very Catholic observing Mia to agree to Nicole's plan to murder Guy but the way he treats her,like dirt, pushes her over the edge in willing to do him in.Luring Guy away from the boys school where he resides both Nicoel and Mia have him secretly travel to a friends home, the Danzingers, in Pittsburgh where they plan to murder him. It's there that Mia got the brutish Guy drunk, which wasn't that hard top do, on booze that was spiked with a number of strong sleeping pills. With Guy out cold the two dumped him into the bathtub and with the help of what looked like a ten gallon bottle filled with water,to keep him from floating to the surface, ended up drowning him. It's when back at the boys school when Nicole & Mia dumped the boozed and drugged up as well as dead Guy into the school swimming pool that strange things started to happen! Guy not only didn't go to the bottom he didn't even go to the top of the pool? In fact he just plumb disappeared from sight over or under the water line!The rest of the movie has Mia, the weaker of the two murderesses, slowly going to pieces in not only what she did in murdering her husband but far worse in not knowing where his body is in order to give it a decent Catholic burial! Going to the local police to have them track down her missing husband Mia is spotted by retired lady detective Shirley Vogel, Kathy Bates, who smells a big story and takes over the investigation in the missing Guy Barnan.***SPOILERS*** It doesn't take long for Vogel to realized that something isn't exactly kosher in Guy's mysterious disappearance. Checking out all the facts Vogel finds out that Guy was embezzling the funds for the boys school and planning to bankrupt it in order to throw off suspicion on himself by the local police. What's even more interesting is that Guy's partner in crime was non other then Nicoe Horner! His mistress whom, as Vogel soon suspects, was very possibly his murderer as well!The unexpected and shocking final in the film in fact outdoes the original, the 1955 French version, with the truth coming to the surface in what was the real reason in murdering Guy and who were the one's who cooked it up in the first place! This was enough to give you, like one of the principle characters in the movie, an almost fatal heart attack! The fact that the intended victim of this elaborately planned scheme didn't end up dropping dead from fright turned out to be disastrous for those who planned it!

Mr_Ectoplasma "Diabolique", a remake of the 1955 French horror/thriller "Les Diaboliques", centers on Mia Baran (Isabelle Adjani), a devout Catholic woman who is married to an abusive headmaster, Guy (Chazz Palminteri), with whom she runs an all boy's school. She is fairly close to his mistress, Nicole Horner (Sharon Stone), who is a teacher at the school, and the two conspire a plot to murder him. After the deed is done, they dispose of his body in the school's filthy swimming pool... but when the pool is drained, his body is gone, and strange things begin to haunt them, while a nosy detective (Kathy Bates) begins to catch onto the elaborate plot.To start off with, I consider the original "Les Diaboliques" one of the best horror movies of all time - it's painfully suspenseful, genuinely creepy, and has one of the best twist-endings I've ever seen. So, I went into this remake with fairly low expectations, and that may have been why I didn't mind it so much. I knew there was no possible way this re-imagining could out- do the original. So, with that said, I found this film to be a fairly entertaining thriller, even though I knew all the twists and turns of the plot ahead of time. The film takes place in modern day, but maintains a very 1950s feel, with the wardrobe and the old-fashioned architecture of the school. It's surprisingly pretty faithful to the original movie, too, with a few changes scattered about, some for the better and some for the worst. I thought the update of the murder scene was well executed, as was the climax of the film (again, even though I was aware of what to expect). However, as expected, we do have a very "Hollywood" ending - the movie follows the original closely until the last ten minutes, where the conclusion becomes what most American movie-goers would expect. I can't say it's necessarily that awful, and I wasn't expecting the writers to follow the cold, ambiguous conclusion the original had. I suppose I was a tad bit disappointed they didn't stick with the original ending, but what they did do with the new ending was clever.I'd say my biggest complaint here was the absence of ambiguity and suspense the original film upheld. The suspense was fairly secondhand in comparison, and I'd like to have seen improvement there. Acting-wise, I have mixed feelings. Sharon Stone, I felt, was fairly poor at times in her delivery and overall performance, while at other times she did quite well. Her performance was a bit topsy-turvy, but she was good enough, and does have the right 'look' for the part. Isabelle Adjani was great, she made her character very lovable, and her melancholy facial expressions were priceless. Chazz Palminteri was also good in the abusive, jerk-of-a-husband role. I also enjoyed Kathy Bates in the role of the detective, which was played by a male in the original. She's a great actress and played her quirky, offbeat role excellently. Overall, "Diabolique" is a bit of a mixed bag. I enjoyed it mainly because I found the re- imagining of the story an interesting idea, and the re-construction of some of those classic scenes was neat to watch. The problem with this film is if you see it before you see the 1955 version, you probably will enjoy it because the story and plot twists are really clever. However, if you've already seen the original, the story is essentially spoiled. I personally enjoyed watching the re-construction of it though, even with it's faults. I'd say this 1996 version of the story is a decent companion piece to the original - it's fairly entertaining, but can't hold a candle to the film it was based upon. 6/10.

Paul Andrews Diabolique is set in Pennsylvania at the St. Anselm's boarding school for boys which is owned by Mia Baran (Isabelle Adjani), however her husband Guy (Chazz Palminteri) who runs the school treats her like dirt & cheats on her. Mia & a teacher named Nicole Horner (Sharon Stone) whom is one of Guy's many lovers devise a plan to kill him & make it look like an accident, the plan is to drown him & then throw him in the school pool where he will be found & to the police his death will seem like a simple drowning. However after a few days the body isn't found so Mia orders the dirty pool drained when Nicole 'accidently' drops her keys into it, once drained Guy's body is not there. Was Guy dead? Did someone find out there plan? Who knows...Directed by Jeremiah Chechik this is a remake of the black and white French film Les Diaboliques (1955) which itself was based on the novel 'Celle Qui N'Etait Plus' by Pierre Boileau & Thomas Narcejac & I thought was a fairly lazy & plodding mystery thriller with truly one of the worst twist endings ever. The humourless & slow moving script by Don Ross takes ages to do what the average episode of Columbo took about 10 minutes to, to show someone committing the so-called perfect murder. Then it switches to creepy thriller mode as the body vanishes from where the murderers left it & seemingly has come back to life before it all falls apart with one of the worst, most predictable & frankly unlikable twist endings ever. I can't continue my review any further without massive spoilers which will give away the ending so beware, anyway I hate the fact that Mia & Nicole suddenly turn into the heroes of the piece when they were just as bad as Guy since in the case of Mia she planned to kill him in cold blood & Nicole was prepared to trick Mia & ultimately kill her if the plan had succeeded. They were really unlikable character's to begin with so this horrible ending where they become the heroes by killing Guy which is basically exactly the same thing which they set out to do in the first place just grated my nerves. Also, if Mia was feeling so guilty why did she seem almost redeemed at the end? She still ended up killing Guy anyway so why the miraculous change of heart? Also, what about Nicole? She still was part of some scheme where someone was always going to die, be it either Mia or Guy. The ending is just so misjudged, it makes no sense with the rest of the context of the film, it's horribly acted & it's utterly predictable. In fact I guessed how this would end within 30 minutes & I was absolutely right in just about every detail. A really horrible film with an even worse ending, one to avoid.Director Chechik has made some really, really awful films & after this mess & his subsequent big screen adaptation of The Avengers (1998) which is considered one of the worst films ever made Hollywood thankfully hasn't let him anywhere near a film camera since. This guy should be directing traffic rather than films. This is blandly shot in dull autumnal colours which give it forgettable look. I also have to mention the acting, especially by the two female leads Stone & Adjani who are simply terrible. I hated their character's, I hated their acting & thought they were two of the worst performances by leading actors in a Hollywood flick I've ever seen. In the UK this is rated '18' meaning no-one under that age can watch it, I have no idea why as there's no violence worth mentioning, no nudity or sex & it's devoid of any action or excitement.Technically the film is alright but it's flat, dull & blandly filmed. There's no real style here & it's not a film I will remember in any way apart from that terrible ending. As I've said I think the acting by the two leads is simply awful.Diaboliques is a slow moving, utterly predictable thriller with a horrible ending that didn't do anything for me. One to avoid. This probably would have worked better as a 30 minute Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode or maybe even as an obscure black and white French film from the 50's...

Brigid O Sullivan (wisewebwoman) Occasionally only, I should make clear. So bloody awful that not for the first time do I wish there was a minus rating on IMDb. Picked this up in a remainder bin for a couple of dollars and figured I had loved the French original from the fifties so how bad could the remake be? Might be a curiosity item and the cast was pretty stellar - for one the magnificent and rarely misplaced Kathy Bates was in it.Was I in for a shock. Nothing, absolutely nothing, worked in this movie. The plot, the minescule amount that was there of it, was drivel. There was no character development AT ALL.Some awful special effects (get those white eyes on the corpse, folks)and a supposedly creepy atmosphere that makes one chortle every time the usually lovely Isabelle gapes in a mirror at herself. Doesn't everyone look in a mirror when they're frightened? I know it's the first thing I think of, as I climb out of bed after a nightmare - I look in a mirror to make myself feel better.More threads going nowhere than you could count in a ragged old sweater. The lesbian sub-plot that never quite makes it. And it should. It is a key element in this woeful adaptation. Sharon Stone mincing around in an oddly wired looking walk with trampy tight clothes and really high heels and the strangest lipstick that doesn't leave a mark on her frequently lit cigarettes (she's a school teacher in a private school, Catholic, yeah that's believable). And on and on. How does one get funding for such a travesty, thirty million dollars, I believe??? And the overacting of Chazz and Isabelle... I could write a book on that alone. There should be a law against this kind of thing. 1 out of 10 for what I don't know, only that there isn't a zero rating on IMDb. And as I said, we need these movies, just to make us appreciate even the mediocre ones.