John Travolta And Vince Vaughn’s Netflix Thriller Is A Paranoid Family Breakdown

By Robert Scucci
| Published 23 seconds ago

Oh, how much I wanted the critics to be wrong about 2001’s Domestic Disturbance. It’s one of those weird psychological thrillers from the early aughts that has a severe identity crisis, like 2001’s The Glass House, which also had the potential to be a solid film if it didn’t constantly get in its own way, lay everything out far too soon, and pivot way too aggressively in the third act. Both films suffer from taking a simple premise, trying to overcomplicate it with psychological drama, and then completely forgetting what kind of story they’re trying to tell.

It’s a shame too, because John Travolta and Vince Vaughn play well off each other, and had they been given a better screenplay to work with, this would have been a memorable performance for both actors. But they weren’t, so it isn’t.

Your Classic “My Stepdad Is Trying To Kill Me” Setup

Domestic Disturbance is ultimately about one broken family trying to splinter off into two. John Travolta is Frank Morrison, a boat builder on the verge of financial collapse who lives with his new girlfriend Diane (Susan Floyd). His ex-wife Susan (Teri Polo) shares custody of their son Danny (Matt O’Leary), and is about to marry the ultra-wealthy Rick Barnes (Vince Vaughn).

Though Danny is known to get into trouble and lie to every authority figure in his life, he’s always honest with Frank, which immediately comes into play when the boy suggests that Rick isn’t the perfect man he seems to be. Behind closed doors, he’s emotionally abusive, aggressive, and a full-blown psychopath trying to fake it as a typical suburban dad.

Danny’s suspicions in Domestic Disturbance are confirmed when he witnesses the murder of Ray Coleman (Steve Buscemi), a mysterious man who shows up at the wedding unannounced and catches Frank’s attention as a suspicious figure associated with Rick. From this point forward, there’s no real mystery left to address. Frank and Danny know Rick is a murderer, nobody else believes them, the cops get involved, and they’re completely useless, forcing Frank to take matters into his own hands.

By the time we reach the third act, all bets are off. Everybody acts super intense, the family dynamic completely breaks down, and I personally found myself wondering why this movie failed to be even the slightest bit suspenseful despite its rapid-fire approach to escalation.

Domestic Disturbance’s Identity Crisis

The main reason Domestic Disturbance fails as a psychological thriller is because there’s not a single moment where anybody’s motives aren’t crystal clear. There’s some mystery surrounding Rick’s shady past and his overall intentions for the Morrison family, but outside of that, yeah, he’s obviously a shady guy, and the movie gives him plenty of “behind closed doors with Danny” moments to make sure the audience knows it. He’s physically abusive in the kind of way that scares the hell out of the kid, but not enough to leave marks, grabbing him by the arm or neck just hard enough to get his point across without going full psycho.

Frank, who’s not without his own past failings, is trying to do right by his son, who nobody believes, so he starts working with detectives Edgar Stevens (Ruben Santiago-Hudson) and Warren (Chris Ellis), who seem like they’re only showing up in uniform for the free doughnuts. He does his own sleuthing and figures out what the audience already knows: Rick is about to go off the deep end, and nobody in the Morrison family is safe.

From there, Rick almost feels like a narrative switch gets flipped inside him, and suddenly he’s operating like a slasher villain. The same thing happens in The Glass House. A brother and sister suspect their new legal guardians are evil, they confirm it without any sliver of doubt, and then the evil people do evil things. Knowing how evil they are right off the rip just doesn’t make for compelling storytelling. There’s nowhere left to properly escalate, so it goes full ridiculous in its attempts to do so because it left itself with too little headroom, so logically, it needs to jump through the ceiling or stop dead in its tracks. 

There are better ways to play out a premise like this. While I’m not usually a champion of the “unreliable protagonist” trope in psychological thrillers because it’s been done to death, it’s exactly what movies like Domestic Disturbance need. There’s no meaningful buildup of tension here, just a slow crawl toward the inevitable ending we already know we’re going to get, followed by Vince Vaughn going totally berserk at the drop of a hat because that’s what the director told him to do. He does it well in this context, but the context itself is so beyond repair that a couple of talented actors can’t save what was probably doomed from the start.

Domestic Disturbance SCORE

Domestic Disturbance, currently streaming on Netflix, is one of those movies that makes you wonder what could have been. It has all the ingredients of a solid psychological thriller, but its vision never feels fully realized.