Ever since his masterpiece Safe, Haynes has been pretty much unmatched at capturing the unnerving, psychologically poisonous environments his characters are painfully trapped in through pure, ambiguous formal suggestion. In this case, an icky agreed-upon decades-later repression of a foundational transgressive horror that creates this uncomfortable, off-kilter haze out of Moore's manipulative attempt to live in domestic normalcy with her own rape victim; an appalling relationship dynamic and home life that hides behind a veneer of grown-up childishness and is disrupted by Portman (perfectly cast as an overmanned, self-conscious "truth" seeking actress) probing and recreating such a lurid, traumatic event out of blatant voyeuristic curiosity and cheap entertainment. ("The kids are cute, but not sexy enough" is so insane.) It's a true crime tabloid scandal/Lifetime soap opera duel between two women that Haynes manages to turn into a genuinely layered psychodrama on identity, celebrity and exploitative power dynamics filled visual reflections, unbearable pent-up tension, and a unique sense of borderline satirical cynicism and humor about how openly sociopathic and performative they are. (The lisp and overbearing, melodramatic score are such incredible touches.) But somehow also managing to do all that without sacrificing the tragedy at the center of all this in the form of Melton, who is tasked with the impossible: figuring out how to live a real life and embody genuine pain and heartache in this haunted, dreamily constructed environment by both the women preying on him and Haynes. His physical performance that is simultaneously that of a scared, stunted child and a weary old man is unreal, and I'm not sure there was a scene as simultaneously funny as it was horrifically sad as "I can't tell if we're connecting or if I'm creating a bad memory for you in real-time." And I won’t spoil it, but it all builds to a self-reflexive autocritique ending straight out of the De Palma playbook that is both a tragic realization and a cruel, ironic gag that is just easily one of the best of the year.