Theyre the warring queens in this well-appointed fairy tale, the beloved new girlfriend and the barely tolerated ex-wife, one good and one very, very bad.

Played with utter conviction, neither is as self-assured as she seems, but theyre both ready to take it to the limit as director Denise Di Novi steadily turns up the heat on a lethal bouillabaisse of sex, domesticity and juicy archetypes a recipe thats equal parts Fatal Attraction, Charles Perrault and Nancy Meyers.

Poised to make a box-office killing, the glossy femme-centric thriller has a sharper edge than the setup, giddily teetering on retrograde nonsense, might suggest.

That would be David Connover (Geoff Stults, of Grace and Frankie ), the storys prince.

Like most fairy-tale princes, hes handsome, has a castle (Southern California real estate, inherited and decidedly luxe ) and is as dull as freshly laundered dirt.

A former Wall Street hotshot turned Main Street entrepreneur, he owns a microbrewery.

Of course. Hes a catch, as your grandmother might put it, but the jurys out on whether hes much of a prize.

The action then reels back six months to the dream before the nightmare: In San Francisco, website editor Julia gets a spirited send-off from her boss and bestie, Ali (Whitney Cummings, aces in the wisecracking Eve Arden role).

In the spirit of fresh starts, she packs up her little car and heads to the tony (fictional) SoCal enclave of Foothill, where shell move in with fianc David and get to know his young daughter, Lily (Isabella Kai Rice).

Davids ex, Tessa, quickly claims center stage, even on days when Lily is at her dads.

She lives in high style without the bother of an actual job which would only interfere with her full-time pursuit of controlling perfectionism.

Thirty years later, Unforgettable flips the Fatal Attraction equation: Its the stay-at-home mom whos needy and deranged and the career woman who finds balance, epitomized in the warmth and humor between Julia and Ali (who both work in publishing, as did Glenn Closes friendless character in the earlier thriller).

When Tessa witnesses the rapport among Julia, David and Lily in an early scene, the director and Caleb Deschanel, her accomplished cinematographer, zero in on a look so wounded that it lays the foundation for all the gaslighting devilry to come, both IRL and online.

Warning to the masses: Make your passwords less obvious).

Played to glacial perfection by Cheryl Ladd, Helen is a forbidding figure whos nonetheless adored by her granddaughter, with Rice a convincing innocent caught up in the matrilineal madness.

Helens rigid ideas about a womans worth self-hatred disguised as Botox-smoothed self-love might seem antiquated if she werent spewing them in the middle of a Hollywood movie.

And no wonder Julia, afraid of looking weak or damaged, doesnt tell David about the domestic abuse in her recent past, or the restraining order against her ex that uh-oh has just expired.

Pulse-point editing by Frdric Thoraval and the rising churn of Toby Chus smartly used score intensify the jitters.

Throughout the drama, but especially in the austere elegance of Tessas house and the vibrant sumptuousness of David and Julias, Nelson Coates character-defining production design ups the aspirational emotional ante.

But all the characters, with their movie-glamorous sheen, are figures in a thrill ride, some more fully realized than others.

Di Novi pulls it all together with flair, complete with a nod to the 1945 Gene Tierney starrer Leave Her to Heaven, perhaps Hollywoods most deliriously demented portrait of jealousy.

Over-the-top villains like those played by Tierney and Heigl might be scarce, but mean girls are out there.

Cast: Rosario Dawson, Katherine Heigl, Geoff Stults, Sarah Burns, Whitney Cummings, Simon Kassianides, Isabella Kai Rice, Robert Ray Wisdom, Alex Quijano, Cheryl Ladd Director: Denise Di Novi Screenwriter: Christina Hodson Producers: Denise Di Novi, Alison Greenspan, Ravi Mehta Executive producers: Lynn Harris, Steven Mnuchin Director of photography: Caleb Deschanel Production designer: Nelson Coates Costume designer: Marian Toy Editor: Frdric Thoraval Composer: Toby Chu Casting: Susie Farris.

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER is a registered trademark of The Hollywood Reporter, LLC.

Unforgettable Movie Wiki