Sleeping with the Enemy
for violence, language, and sex.
Reviewed by: Gabe Rodriguez
CONTRIBUTOR
| Moral Rating: | Average |
| Moviemaking Quality: |
|
| Primary Audience: | Adults |
| Genre: | Thriller |
| Length: | 1 hr. 39 min. |
| Year of Release: | 1991 |
| USA Release: |
| Featuring | Julia Roberts, Patrick Bergin, Kevin Anderson, Elizabeth Lawrence, Kyle Secor |
| Director |
Joseph Ruben |
| Producer |
20th Century Fox |
| Distributor |
“Sleeping with the Enemy” is one of the creepiest, most intense thrillers of the nineties. It stars Julia Roberts as Laura, a beautiful young trophy wife to Martin, a handsome, wealthy businessman.
Behind closed doors, Martin is abusive to Laura and often physically bruises her. One night, when they decide to go sailing, Laura jumps overboard and fakes her own drowning. She then escapes Martin’s evil clutches and moves to a sleepy and peaceful Iowa town where she can be near her mother, who is blind and in a nursing home. It is in this town that she meets Ben, a friendly drama teacher at the local college. The two eventually become a happy couple and fall in love, but not without much reservation from Laura because of her abusive past. Before long, Martin discovers some clues that lead to his conclusion that Laura is not really dead. He becomes obsessed with tracking down Laura’s whereabouts.
From a Christian perspective, “Sleeping with the Enemy” is a rather soft R-rated thriller. It has brief use of the f-word, but that basically consists of the objectionable language. Violence is moderate, with a bit of lethal violence towards the end. The whole film, however, is brimming with intensity and it’s all very scary. There is a brief, mild sex scene towards the beginning, but it is mostly implied.
For older teens (15 or so and up) and their parents, “Sleeping with the Enemy” proves to be a lean, cunning thriller that has thick suspense you could cut with a knife.
