Quartile rating: 6/10 · 1 rating
A seductive teen befriends an introverted high school student and schemes her way into the lives of her wealthy family.
Poison Ivy is a modestly effective early-90s erotic thriller that benefits from a committed Drew Barrymore performance as the manipulative Ivy and a genuinely unsettling sociopathic dynamic. The plot follows a fairly familiar noir-ish template of the dangerous outsider infiltrating a vulnerable household, executed competently but without major surprises. The cinematography is serviceable with some moody atmosphere but nothing technically distinctive. Its novelty lies in its female-directed, female-centered perspective on the dangerous-seductress archetype, giving it a slightly different charge than male-gaze equivalents, though the premise itself is well-worn. The ending feels rushed and somewhat anticlimactic given the tension built throughout, failing to deliver a fully satisfying payoff.