New Thriller Starring Emily Ratajkowski and Natalie Dormer Criticized for ‘Gratuitous Nudity’

(Photo: YouTube)

(Photo: YouTube)

A new thriller starring Game of Thrones actress Natalie Dormer and Emily Ratajkowski, In Darkness, has caught flack from critics for its “gratuitous nudity.”

Dormer plays a blind woman, Sofia, whose beautiful and—as it usually goes in these instances—”mysterious” neighbor Veronique is thrown off her roof in an act of apparent murder. 

(Photo: YouTube)

Critics gave the movie soft praise for its direction and Dormer’s performance, but many took issue with Ratajkowski’s Eastern European accent (sorry, girl!) and the movie’s plentiful nudity.

A critic at Rogerebert.com wrote that the violence was “sadistic” and another from The Guardian described the movie as a “trashy crime caper” that “finds fetish items everywhere.”

(Photo: YouTube)

“The film infuses its fairly generic storyline with some audacious stylistic devices,” The Hollywood Reporter wrote, “such as a sequence intercutting the ritual religious washing of Veronique’s corpse with images of Sofia showering, the latter complete with gratuitous nudity.”

(Photo: YouTube)

Dormer, who co-wrote the script, defended her movie in an interview with The Guardian.

“There has to be sexuality in the power play of a thriller. We have all got bodies, after all. In this film the sex scene, which for me was a love-making scene, is a metaphor for the way my character connects with the part played by [fellow Game of Thrones actor] Ed Skrein… Nakedness is a good equalizer and the shower scene also shows the tattoos on my character’s body and makes it clear she is not quite who you think.”

(Photo: YouTube)

She then defended a sex scene.

If the lead characters do not have a clear connection, then it doesn’t work… And on screen it has to be a physical connection between two broken people. That was my intention. In a thriller the protagonists always have to join together somehow and sex represents that connection. If you are being true to the genre, you have to show this.

(Photo: YouTube)

See for yourself. In Darkness is currently streaming on Amazon Prime and available for download on iTunes.

h/t Esquire

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