The Deep End (2001) is a psychological crime thriller with no guns, explosions, or action set pieces. It's the kind of movie that no longer gets a theatrical release at all; there wouldn't be enough money in it. (Budget $3m, box office $10m.)

Margaret Hall (Tilda Swinton) is busy raising three kids (and appeasing her cranky, live-in father-in-law, an unofficial fourth child), but makes the time for a midday trip to town, to a gay nightclub where she's tracked down a charming scumbag named Darby (Josh Lucas). She's there to tell him to his face to stay away from her teenaged son Beau (Jonathan Tucker), who was behind the wheel in a traffic accident while "his 30-year-old boyfriend was drunk in the seat beside him." Darby agrees -- provided Margaret first pays him $5000 to leave her son alone.

As the movie unfolds before you, you realize that you're not watching a family, you're watching a close-knit group of strangers going through the motions of playing a family; they don't really talk or listen to each other, and when Margaret tells Beau that his boyfriend tried to shake her down, he's pissed off and accuses his mom of sticking her nose where it doesn't belong.

The Hall family seems to have it all: they're affluent and well-educated, with a beautiful house on Lake Tahoe and a privileged, unruffled lifestyle anyone would envy. Bad things aren't supposed to happen to people like these, who've made all the right choices. Margaret writes a troubling e-mail to her naval officer husband (at sea, gone for months at a time), then deletes it; he doesn't know, or want to know, that his son is gay. Late that night, Darby shows up drunk at the Hall's home and lures Beau outside; things go south, spectacularly.

The next morning, Margaret does what moms do best: cleaning up other people's messes. Holding this family together is mom's full-time job, but no sooner has she clumsily disposed of one body than an even worse parasite leeches onto her: Alek (Goran Visnjic), who comes bearing evidence that will instantly turn Margaret and/or Beau into murder suspects. She has one day to put her hands on a large sum of cash that the bank won't let her have.

The Hall family's seemingly idyllic life is built on a foundation of denial and frustrated silence; everyone keeps their thoughts and feelings to themselves, and mom and son dare not utter a word that might insinuate that each thinks the other is a murderer. If the cracks in the family facade widen, the truth will burst through, blowing up in their faces. This makes them easy prey for a blackmailer like Alek, but it turns out that Alek's in the wrong line of work; he's a blackmailer with a conscience.

That doesn't stave off the even greater threat behind Alek, or the story's violent climax, but by now there's no going back. Margaret's tearful "just friends" echoes the words Beau used at the beginning to describe his relationship with Darby, and the irony isn't lost on him. (The Deep End is a remake of a 1949 movie in which the teenage daughter, not the son, is in a relationship with a sleazy older man.) A somber ending, with mom an emotional wreck and her son awkwardly but sincerely trying to comfort her, makes it clear that the Hall family has been broken, but as the movie zooms out from that beautiful lakeside home, it offers viewers the possibility that these characters can still super glue the resemblance of a family back together again, in time for dad's return home. That's what passes for a happy ending.