Seventeen years before sizzling the screen with Sydney Sweeney in The Housemaid, Amanda Seyfried delivered a torrid turn opposite Julianne Moore in Chloe, a wildly overlooked erotic thriller from filmmaker Atom Egoyan. The steamy cinematic subgenre popular in the ’80s and ’90s due to hit movies like Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct has largely disappeared over the last decade or so, but seems to be making a rousing comeback with the success of The Housemaid, The Hunting Wives, and others.
Released to mixed reviews in 2009, Chloe tracks an illicit lesbian love affair between a married doctor and a high-class sex worker who is hired to tempt the former’s husband following hints of infidelity. What begins as a conniving ruse to expose her husband’s unfaithful behavior twists into a lurid love triangle that harks back to an age when sleazy, over-the-top erotica used to reign supreme in the mainstream.
‘Chloe’s Steamy Premise, Explained
A remake of the 2003 French film Nathalie, Chloe is an underrated erotic thriller that begins in Toronto with the seemingly idyllic home life of the Stewart family. Catherine (Moore) is a successful gynecologist; her husband, David (Liam Neeson), is a college professor, and they have a healthy teenage son named Michael (Max Thieriot). Upon seeing David pose with a female student on his cell phone, Catherine is convinced her husband is having an affair.
To prove her theory, Catherine hires Chloe Sweeney (Seyfried), a high-class sex worker she continually encounters in town, to seduce David and test his loyalty. While saddened at first, Catherine becomes increasingly aroused by Chloe’s weekly reports of her sexual imbroglios with David. While describing a hotel tryst, Chloe suddenly kisses Catherine, who recoils and storms home in a huff. At home, David recognizes the scent of Chloe’s lotion on Catherine’s skin, which angers Catherine and prompts her to return to the hotel to see Chloe.
At the hotel, Catherine implores Chloe to touch her in the way David touched Chloe. Giving in to carnal temptation, Catherine is seduced and sexually dominated by Chloe in a torrid nighttime tryst that harkens back to the days of mature erotic thrillers made before the silly Fifty Shades movies turned the genre into an endangered laughingstock. With the plot only thickening and knotting tighter from here, those who enjoyed Amanda Seyfried in The Housemaid need to see what happens at the end of Chloe.
‘Chloe’ Was Among the Last of a Dying Breed Before the ‘Fifty Shades’ Debacle
No stranger to erotic thrillers, Atom Egoyan has mastered the genre with movies like Speaking Parts, Exotica, and Where the Truth Lies. Essaying cinematic erotica at a time when such movies were popular mainstream affairs, Egoyan made movies alongside such ’80s and ’90s hits as Dressed to Kill, Body Heat, Body Double, Blue Velvet, Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct, Sliver, The Last Seduction, Disclosure, Jade, Bound, Wild Things, Eyes Wide Shut, and more.
While immensely popular in the past, erotic thrillers have waned dramatically in the past two decades or so for a variety of reasons. Hollywood has grappled with the predatory behavior of industry titans like Harvey Weinstein, backed by the Times Up and MeToo movements.
Outside of Hollywood, younger generations have reported less sexual intimacy than before, with the 2020s somewhat defined as the age of prudery. While the confluence of these factors has contributed to a lesser demand for the popular erotic thrillers of the ’80s and ’90s, the ridiculous Fifty Shades of Grey movies also extinguished the incendiary passion for this type of movie.
Between 2015 and 2018, the ridiculous Fifty Shades trilogy induced far more eye-rolling laughter than any genuine sense of arousal or profound exploration of carnal desires and corporeal obsessions. The awkward, unsexy, deeply unpleasurable films featuring nonexistent chemistry between Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan all but killed the erotic thriller genre, or at least put it on life support for the next several years.
Although Chloe isn’t totally immune to wading into the ludicrous, by comparison, it is far steamier, more absorbing, and much more mature than the Fifty Shades movies, which are so unintentionally comedic that the franchise was spoofed in Fifty Shades of Black. Along with Chloe, movies like The Housemaid are poised to inject much-needed life into the moribund erotic thriller genre, with Amanda Seyfried deserving credit as the link between them.
The Erotic Thriller Genre Is Finally Coming Back in Hollywood
Paul Feig’s The Housemaid, starring Seyfried and Sweeney, grossed a staggering $247 million at the international box office on a $35 million budget. Coupled with positive reviews, it’s no surprise that Lionsgate has greenlit a sequel. Yet, far from a one-off success, the erotic thriller genre appears to be reviving and thriving this decade. Look no further than recent cinematic examples like May December, Babygirl, Bone Lake, Fair Play, Deep Water, Challengers, Pretty Thing, Miller’s Girl, The Voyeurs, and the like.
On television, the trend continues. One of Netflix’s biggest hits in 2025 was The Hunting Wives, an openly sleazy erotic thriller that was quickly renewed for a second season following massive viewership. While perhaps not as popular or high-quality, other small screen examples include Obsession, The Couple Next Door, Fatal Seduction, Lady Voyeur, Dangerous Liaisons, and others.
There are also upcoming erotic thriller series, such as Night Nurse, Teach Me, and Hancock Park, which are poised to continue the trend of reinvigorating a bygone genre that was once treated with far more maturity in the ’80s and ’90s. For erotic thriller fans pumped to see the genre make a welcome comeback, and for The Housemaid fans who enjoyed Seyfried’s performance, Chloe can’t come recommended higher enough.
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