Sylvie Cooper (Melissa Gilbert) is a daughter of privilege. Her father Darryl (Tom Skeritt), a powerful media mogul and conservative TV commentator, spares no expense when it comes to his daughter, including her education at an elite private high school. Sylvie, alas, is anything but happy: introverted, prone to awkwardness, and a self-professed geek, she has no real friends among her classmates. Time not spent studying is spent rebelling against her father, with whom she disagrees politically, and her mother Georgie (Cheryl Ladd) who is slowly dying from emphysema as a shell of the woman she used to be.
The arrival of new transfer student Ivy (Drew Barrymore) sends her life into a tizzy. A budding friendship forms based on their equal status as outsiders, and Ivy begins insinuating herself more and more into Sylvie's life. Charismatic and charming, it doesn't take long for Sylvie's family to begin treating her like a full-fledged member of the household. Even Fred, Sylvie's dog who dislikes everyone except Sylvie, slowly warms to Ivy's presence.
The Cooper family doesn't realize it, but Ivy is filling in a niche all three of them are lacking. For Georgie, Ivy is the polite and well-behaved daughter she's never had. For Sylvie, she's a female friend in which to confide, someone to whom she can tell all the things she can't bring herself to tell her mother. And for Darryl, she's the spitting image of the vibrant, vivacious woman he married, but whom he is forced to watch succumb to the ravages of a fatal illness. Having identified the cracks, Ivy, like her namesake, begins to grow and twist, manipulating her way towards getting what she has always felt she lacked: a perfect, loving family to call her very own. Even if it means resorting to murder in order to get her way.
In 1987, director Adrian Lyne set screens ablaze across the United States with Fatal Attraction, where a one-night stand with Glenn Close turns Michael Douglas's entire life upside down. While far from the first erotic thriller, it was successful enough to result in a bevvy of "me too" films with the similar premise of a femme fatale who sets her eyes on the prize and refuses to blink: Rebecca De Mornay in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, Linda Fiorentino in The Last Seduction, and queen trope codifier Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct.
New Line Cinema, ever the bastion of good taste, asked, "What if Fatal Attraction, but teenagers?" and thus was born the vine of Poison Ivy, from which an entire legion of "Lethal Lolita" styled productions (The Crush, The Babysitter, Look Away, and so forth) sprouted. I'd seen a number of these already, but somehow missed Poison Ivy--probably because I was too young to see it in 1992, and by the time I was old enough to not need my mom's permission, I dove head-first into the horror genre and rarely looked back.
What shocked me most about the movie wasn't the plot (you know what you're in for just by reading the back of the jacket) or the casting choices (everyone here turns in a fine performance), but that it managed to spawn not only three sequels but also a cluster of imitators. If I'm being honest, Poison Ivy is relentlessly average.
That's not meant to be a back-handed compliment. Not every movie has to be Citizen Kane, after all. But even this unrated cut (which still only runs 92 minutes compared to the original theatrical release's 89) manages to seem both too short and too long at the same time. The ending especially comes on with brake-slamming abruptness: Sara Gilbert delivers a monologue talking about how she still misses Ivy over a scene of her sitting where they first met, then suddenly we cut to the credits, leaving one with the impression another sentence or two is missing.
There's a very simple story to tell here, and director Katt Shea tells it directly. Maybe a little too directly. Darryl, Sylvie, Georgie, even Ivy have very little in the way of characterization. In a well-told tale, we're supposed to feel like we knew the characters by the time the credits roll. But Poison Ivy left me feeling the same way at the end as I did as the beginning: like I peeked in on the lives of some people I didn't know, and who I still didn't really get to know after ninety minutes was up.
Occasionally, we get a glimpse of something that made me hope we'd see more: a few Polaroid pictures of Georgie and Tom when they were younger and she was in better health hint at the relationship they used to have; some people walking or chatting in the background (including a young Leonardo DiCaprio with no speaking lines, credited only as "Guy") give the impression this is supposed to be real life, but it ultimately feels more like a stage play cut-and-pasted into film form without anyone responsible for the production understanding the difference.
Maybe this was a deliberate decision. A key feature of Poison Ivy's story is loneliness and the lengths some people are willing to go in order to overcome that. The minimalist setting definitely works for this--the Coopers live in a palatial estate on a hillside with an incredible view of the valley below, shot on location in Los Angeles, but the scenes taking place inside that house seem cramped and claustrophobic, isolating even when Darryl hosts a crowded party for his co-workers.
Or it could be the result of watching the movie in a cropped, 1.33:1 pan and scan aspect ratio which, sadly, appears to be the only way it was was released on LD.
Either way, Poison Ivy works well enough to do what it came to do without lingering, but if you find yourself in your mid forties hunting around for an erotic thriller to pass the time, you'll be fine picking something else.