sleeping with the enemy movie review

Sleeping with the Enemy

Because the opening scenes of “Sleeping with the Enemy” are so powerful, the rest of the movie is all the more disappointing. The film begins as an unyielding look at a battered wife, and ends as another one of those thrillers where the villain toys with his victim and the audience. There are good performances all through the movie, but the filmmakers don’t keep faith with their actors.

This is the first big starring role since “ Pretty Woman ” for Julia Roberts , who plays the young wife of a millionaire investment counselor. Presumably they have a place in town somewhere, but all of their domestic scenes together are spent in their luxurious summer home at the beach, where the husband ( Patrick Bergin ) institutes a reign of psychological and physical terror.

He’s one of those men who sees his wife as both possession and servant. She’s attractive to show off at parties, but at home he lashes out at her if the towels aren’t perfectly straightened in the bathroom, or the canned goods aren’t lined up on the shelves with military precision. She is allowed no will of her own, and when he strikes her for the first time, it has a brutal impact on the audience. Bergin is very good as the anal-retentive tyrant, and the film seems poised to make some sort of effective dramatic statement.

But no. “Sleeping with the Enemy” is a slasher movie in disguise, an up-market version of the old exploitation formula where the victim can run, but she can’t hide.

Roberts fakes her own death by drowning and tries to disappear into a new lifestyle far away in Iowa, but of course Bergin tracks her down, with no small thanks to several ham-handed plot developments so obvious that she might just as well have mailed him a change-of-address card.

There are some well-handled scenes in Iowa, including the gradual steps by which she learns to trust her next-door neighbor, a drama teacher played warmly and effectively by Kevin Anderson . But the director, Joseph Ruben , and the writer, Ronald Bass , seem determined to force this potentially special material into the mold of horror formulas. Ruben’s 1987 film “ The Stepfather ” received high praise in some quarters for its portrait of a soft-spoken, clear-eyed man who specialized in marrying women with children and then killing them and looting their assets. It was an exploitation film trying to transcend its genre. This time, with a first-rate cast and a larger budget, Ruben seems to be moving in the opposite direction.

I found myself watching the film in sinking spirits. The opening scenes on the beach were effective and held my attention.

Then the middle passages of the movie, where Bergin discovers the deception and goes looking for Roberts, began to disillusion me. The one thing an audience should never do, during scenes like this, is question the plot logic. And yet I kept having questions, such as: (1) If the wedding ring is still in the bottom of the toilet, does that mean the toilet hadn’t been used for weeks? (2) How did the woman in the YWCA class get Bergin’s number at work? (3) How did Roberts pay her mother’s nursing home bill in the six months after she told her husband the mother was dead? (4) How did Bergin know where Roberts lived before she led him there? (5) How is it possible, in a small house, for a man to avoid discovery while slinking around rearranging all of the towels and canned goods? (6) Why would he bother, anyway? That last one is a real good question. From the point of view of Roberts and the audience, Bergin is a monster whose domestic neatness is his trademark. But would Bergin himself, concerned with trying to track and kill, take the time to rearrange the kitchen shelves? There is only one reason for him to do that: So Roberts can discover that the shelves are rearranged, and the movie can provide us with a cheap little shock.

But hold on. Put yourself in her shoes. You’re alone in a house and terrified that you may have been tracked by your husband, a pathological madman. What do you do? Check out the kitchen shelves? And then there’s the obligatory scene at the end where it turns out a dead man isn’t dead after all. After “ Carrie ” and “ Halloween ,” where this gimmick worked, and after the countless dreary times since then when it has reappeared with clockwork monotony, isn’t it time for a new twist on the gimmick? “Sleeping with the Enemy” is a movie that briefly seems to have greatness in its grasp, and goes straight for the mundane.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

• Patrick Bergin as Martin
• Kevin Anderson as Ben
• Elizabeth Lawrence as Chloe
• Kyle Secor as Fleishman
• Claudette Nevins as Dr. Rissner
• Julia Roberts as Sara/Laura
• George Bowers
• Jerry Goldsmith

Photographed by

• John W. Lindley

Directed by

• Joseph Ruben

Produced by

• Leonard Goldberg

Based On The Novel by

• Nancy Price
• Ronald Bass

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Parents' guide to, sleeping with the enemy.

• Common Sense Says
• Parents Say 1 Review
• Kids Say 3 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

Spousal-abuse thriller has violence and language.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Sleeping with the Enemy is a 1991 drama, based on a 1987 novel by Nancy Price, that pretends to be about domestic abuse but feels more like a horror movie played for suspense and chills. A wealthy financier brutally hits his young beautiful wife and then apologizes for what he…

Why Age 15+?

A man beats his wife regularly, punching and kicking her. He constantly repriman

A suspicious and jealous husband accuses his wife of having her eye on another m

"F--k," "s--t."

Any Positive Content?

A violently abusive marriage is a lot like a horror movie.

Laura is a meek young wife who is under the thumb of Martin, her wealthy, contro

Parents need to know that Sleeping with the Enemy is a 1991 drama, based on a 1987 novel by Nancy Price, that pretends to be about domestic abuse but feels more like a horror movie played for suspense and chills. A wealthy financier brutally hits his young beautiful wife and then apologizes for what he euphemistically calls "quarreling." He controls her every move, strangling her freedom until she meticulously puts into action her long-planned escape scheme. Stalking, attempted murder, actual murder, gun violence, clothed sex, and language including "f--k" and "s--t" make this iffy for kids.

To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Violence & Scariness

A man beats his wife regularly, punching and kicking her. He constantly reprimands and threatens her. When she leaves without a trace, he uses his wealth and resources to track her down and threaten her some more. A man is interrupted while trying to strangle someone. A man is shot several times, but continues to move forward while dripping blood. Bruises are seen on an abused wife's arm and face. A thunderstorm puts a sailboat trip in jeopardy and tosses passengers overboard.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A suspicious and jealous husband accuses his wife of having her eye on another man. A couple has clothed sex. The wife looks pained but when the husband turns to her, she fakes a smile, suggesting that the sex is not really consensual. A woman and man kiss passionately on a staircase.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Messages

Positive role models.

Laura is a meek young wife who is under the thumb of Martin, her wealthy, controlling, and abusive husband. She doesn't stand up to him but is clever enough to secretly plan a seemingly foolproof escape. Martin is murderous, methodical, and persevering in his search for her.

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Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents Say (1)
• Kids Say (3)

Based on 1 parent review

All the characters seem to be at an 11.

What's the story.

In SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY, Laura ( Julia Roberts ) is the young wife of wealthy financier Martin (Patrick Bergin). Their marriage seems perfect, but quickly Martin's insistence on controlling Laura's every move, on the towels hanging just so and the canned goods facing forward in the cabinets, hint at pathological underpinnings. Martin's quiet voice masks his violent abuse of the defenseless and isolated Laura. The secrecy of her patient, long-term plan to escape him underscores the terror under which she lived through the three-year marriage. She remakes herself, settling in a small Midwestern town with a new name, but lives in fear that he'll track her down. Living with that fear informs the plotting, which includes a score and camerawork designed to encourage the audience to imagine terror and doom in every shadow. A violent climax allows good to triumph, but not without first suggesting the possibility that evil might come out on top.

Is It Any Good?

In the effort to bolster a straightforward domestic abuse plot with creaky horror clichés, this movie is at least 20 minutes too long. Unnecessary minutes are wasted as the psychotic husband stalks the escaped wife at a carnival and the camera lingers forever as the wild-eyed man stares at his wife from afar. Director Joseph Rubin's strange choice of treating Sleeping with the Enemy more like a vampire story than one of domestic abuse almost mocks the real tragedy that so many abused spouses actually experience. Martin becomes a caricature that has more in common with the shark in Jaws -- complete with his own personal manipulative scary soundtrack -- than with the true terror caused by a violently abusive husband.

Even when goodness is about to triumph, Martin lumbers ahead like the walking dead, surging relentlessly toward the terrified Laura, despite having been shot in the chest numerous times. It's as if the director, not trusting the inherent drama of the story, prefers to stoop to cheap cinematic manipulation and to abandon all semblance of reality. In one such example, as Martin searches for Laura's new boyfriend, he mistakenly attacks someone else with a gun. The guy persuades Martin he has the wrong man and Martin runs off. Why doesn't the man call the police? Why doesn't he warn others of the maniac on the loose? Viewers may be prompted to ask such reasonable questions, but there won't be any reasonable answers.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about why women can feel trapped in violent relationships. Abusers often isolate their victims the way the husband does in Sleeping with the Enemy . What are some other ways they make it difficult for their victims to leave them?

In the movie, the husband insists the wife account for her whereabouts at all times, making it hard for her to have enough private time to get away from him. How much more difficult do you think it would've been for the wife to get away had she been poor? Do you think poverty plays a role in whether victims are able to escape their tormentors? Why?

What elements of the movie make this feel more like a horror movie than a movie about a social problem?

How do you determine what is acceptable behavior in a relationship, and how do you identify someone who is abusive? What should you do if you or someone you know is being abused?

Movie Details

• In theaters : February 8, 1991
• On DVD or streaming : December 1, 2009
• Cast : Julia Roberts , Patrick Bergin , Kevin Anderson
• Director : Joseph Ruben
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : 20th Century Fox
• Genre : Horror
• Run time : 99 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : for wife abuse terror and a sex scene
• Last updated : December 8, 2024

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Sleeping With the Enemy Reviews

One of the great cautionary tales in cinema, boasting an excellent performance by Roberts and a satisfying (if protracted) finale.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Jul 21, 2024

Sleeping with the Enemy is an extremely over the top 'woman in peril' film that stars Julia Roberts' magnificent locks and Patrick Bergin's exquisite moustache. It's lurid, but this domestic abuse thriller holds up on a rewatch.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 1, 2022

A melodramatic showdown...

Full Review | Sep 22, 2022

Roberts evokes sympathy, not just for playing the victim of an unforgivably bad husband, but for becoming the victim of an unforgivably bad movie.

Full Review | Jan 27, 2020

Spousal-abuse thriller has violence and language.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 14, 2017

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Sep 7, 2011

Sleeping With the Enemy is a flat tire of a movie. Looks good -- white sidewalls, chrome spokes -- but it flaps and clunks and never gets to vroom.

Full Review | Oct 18, 2008

...ultimately undone by a relentless emphasis on obvious and downright laughable elements that'll surely leave even the most ingenuous viewer sporadically rolling their eyes.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 29, 2008

It's the sort of movie where all of the characters and plot moves (if one wants to call them that) are tailored to the thriller mechanics and have no existence apart from their crude functionality.

Full Review | Feb 8, 2008

Sleeping With the Enemy teeters constantly on the verge of silliness but director Joseph Ruben keeps the cornball melodrama scaled down to a pleasant lull.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 8, 2008

Roberts is terrific in a layered part. Anderson brings an edge to the nice-guy-next-door role, and the dark, dashing Bergin is chillingly twisted.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 1, 2007

Full Review | Jun 24, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 9, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 9, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 4, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 12, 2004

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Aug 4, 2004

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 27, 2004

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 26, 2004

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Review/Film; Sure, She's Pretty. Pretty Scared, Too.

By Janet Maslin

• Feb. 8, 1991

Martin Burney (Patrick Bergin) has a successful career, an imposing glass-walled beach house and a gorgeous wife, who, at a party, wears the backless black dress that Martin recommended and smiles invitingly at him from across a crowded room. Despite this, and for reasons a film as skin-deep as "Sleeping With the Enemy" would never begin to explain, Martin is a bitterly unhappy man.

He demonstrates this early in the film by knocking his ravishing, compliant wife to the floor and kicking her in the stomach. Among Martin's ostensible reasons for doing this are that his wife, Laura, has talked to the man next door and that she has left the hand towels in the bathroom out of alignment.

"Sleeping With the Enemy," adapted from an appreciably more realistic novel by Nancy Price, is the fairy-tale version of how a woman like Laura Burney might make her getaway. It allows Laura a second chance (and a new name, Sara) in a small Iowa town complete with porch swings, picket fences and a conveniently unmarried nice-guy neighbor. It then casts a shadow over Laura's newfound happiness in the form of Martin himself, now eagerly on his lost wife's trail and elevated from garden-variety abusive husband to homicidal beast.

The creakiness of these developments could be noted with greater detachment were it not for one spectacular ingredient: Julia Roberts, whose very presence transforms "Sleeping With the Enemy" from a minor melodrama into an event. That is no measure of Ms. Roberts's acting ability, which remains unquantifiable, but simply an indication of how much movie-star magnetism she has to spare. Putting her in any film is tantamount to turning on a light switch.

Although it's conceivable that some day audiences may tire of Ms. Roberts's trademark mannerisms, like her way of smiling shyly with every particle of her being, that day is still far in the future. For the moment, as Laura Burney, she shines in even the most impossible situations. Even the obligatory romp montage that finds her trying on theatrical costumes -- funny hats, a clown suit and so on -- to the tune of Van Morrison's "Brown-Eyed Girl" manages to be likable. Count on one thumb the number of actresses who could make such an episode look more enchanting than noxious.

Joseph Ruben, whose other films include "The Stepfather" and "True Believer," has directed "Sleeping With the Enemy" with full appreciation of his leading lady's disarming beauty but less successful attention to the people and places that surround her. This strangely populated film -- aside from the extras in parade and carnival scenes there are almost no secondary characters to be found -- has one-note characterizations and a peculiar sparseness of detail. There is little apparent pathology to the Burney marriage. There is no air of economic or social reality. The beach resort at which the story begins has a deserted feeling, as does the Iowa town where Laura takes refuge. None of the principals have friends.

Kevin Anderson, as Laura's new neighbor, Ben, chiefly conveys patience and geniality, since the screenplay by Ronald Bass allows him little more. Mr. Bergin, who made a credible but colorless Sir Richard Burton in "Mountains of the Moon," plays this film's early scenes so tensely that it becomes difficult to believe that Laura would ever have been drawn to Martin in the first place. Only later, playing the monster at full throttle, does Mr. Bergin come into his own. One of the film's wittier touches, once Martin has arrived to stalk Laura in her new home, involves his incorrigible need to rearrange towel racks and grocery shelves wherever he goes.

It is at this later stage that Mr. Ruben also regains his grip, turning the film's last 20 minutes into a well-crafted, if predictable, exercise in suspense. The next film maker who finally allows a dead-looking body to remain dead will have at last infused the contemporary horror genre with an element of surprise.

"Sleeping With the Enemy" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It includes sexual situations and violence. Sleeping With the Enemy Directed by Joseph Ruben; screenplay by Ronald Bass; director of photography, John W. Lindley; edited by George Bowers; music by Jerry Goldsmith; production designer, Doug Kraner; produced by Leonard Goldberg; released by 20th Century Fox. Running time: 99 minutes. This film is rated R. Laura/Sara . . . Julia Roberts Martin . . . Patrick Bergin Ben . . . Kevin Anderson Chloe . . . Elizabeth Lawrence Fleishman . . . Kyle Secor

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Metacritic reviews

Sleeping with the enemy.

• 80 Variety Variety In Sleeping with the Enemy, a chilling look at marital abuse gives way to a streamlined thriller [from the novel by Nancy Price] delivering mucho sympathy for imperiled heroine Julia Roberts and screams aplenty as she's stalked by her maniacal husband.
• 60 TV Guide Magazine TV Guide Magazine Sleeping With The Enemy teeters constantly on the verge of silliness but director Joseph Ruben keeps the cornball melodrama scaled down to a pleasant lull.
• 58 Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman As an actress, Roberts has more than a great smile. She’s alive on screen — you can practically feel her pulse. But someone should have realized that audiences would be on her side even if every single moment of a movie weren’t calculated to put them there.
• 50 The New York Times Janet Maslin The New York Times Janet Maslin Joseph Ruben, whose other films include The Stepfather and True Believer, has directed Sleeping With the Enemy with full appreciation of his leading lady's disarming beauty but less successful attention to the people and places that surround her.
• 50 Time Out Time Out This is in the 'never trust appearances' mould popularised by Fatal Attraction and Pacific Heights.
• 50 Washington Post Desson Thomson Washington Post Desson Thomson Ruben, at least, is adept with suspense tactics. He keeps Bergin lurking off screen for an agonizingly long time and he knows his suspenseful way around a bathtub. There's also some respectably scary business to do with neatly arranged bathroom towels and food cans in the pantry. But Ruben is merely modulating mediocre material.
• 50 Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum The script itself—credited to Ronald Bass, and adapted from Nancy Price's novel—is a tissue of so many stupid and implausible contrivances that the only possible way of enjoying it is by taking your brain out to lunch.
• 50 Washington Post Rita Kempley Washington Post Rita Kempley Ultimately Sleeping With the Enemy wants to be about one woman's rebirth, but Roberts neither grows nor glows in this empty movie.
• 38 Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert Because the opening scenes of Sleeping with the Enemy are so powerful, the rest of the movie is all the more disappointing. The film begins as an unyielding look at a battered wife, and ends as another one of those thrillers where the villain toys with his victim and the audience.
• 20 Empire Empire Dump thriller which trivialises the subject matter.
• See all 22 reviews on Metacritic.com
• See all external reviews for Sleeping with the Enemy

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SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY

What You Need To Know:

(L, VVV, SSS) Few obscenities; explicit sexual relations and adultery; extreme violence; and, cruelty and murder.

More Detail:

The thriller, SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY, involves a sociopathic husband, his terrified wife and her desire to escape from his tyranny.

When Laura married Martin Burney nearly four years earlier, she had no way of knowing the depth of his passion. On the outside, they seem the ideal couple. As a perfect housewife, she serves his every need, from keeping kitchen and bath towels straight to keeping canned goods in order in the cupboard. He is a handsome, successful, attentive investment broker.

Their home on the Cape Cod beach is huge and impeccable. Within the Burney household, however, Laura lives in terror, waiting for an opportunity to escape the nightmare of Martin’s jealousy and sadistic beatings.

One night, following a savage beating, Laura and Martin go sailing with their neighbor, and a storm develops. As Martin and his friend struggle to keep the boat from capsizing, they discover Laura missing. Although her life jacket turns up after an extensive search, the body is not found.

Thus, Martin proceeds with a memorial service for his “princess.” In reality, Laura has made her escape by swimming to shore and after retrieving a cache of belongings, she catches the first bus out of town.

She ends up in the college town of Cedar Falls, Iowa, and endeavors to make a new life. Before long, she finds a new love interest in Ben, the local college drama teacher, and her former name and life are forgotten.

However, Martin finds out about Laura’s escape and hires detectives to find her. Once he locates Laura’s mother in a nursing home, he pries the needed information out of her.

Meanwhile, Laura and Ben enjoy their developing relationship, going to parades and circuses together. He also helps her find a job, even though she lacks the proper credentials. The denouement comes, however, when Martin arrives in town and again, amid much suspense, ends up terrorizing Laura.

Thoreau once said, “Most men live lives of quiet desperation,” and SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY tends to bear out his philosophy. Granted, wife abuse is a terrible evil and one that needs to be exposed, but women like Laura desperately need the Savior, Jesus Christ, to help them. Then, instead of having to run from their problems and live in fear, the Lord would show them what to do. The Lord tells us in Psalm 32: “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will guide you with My eye.”

Even though SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY is a fast-paced, suspense-filled story, it does not edify the viewer with its explicit sex and graphic violence. Hence, MOVIEGUIDE cannot recommend a film that instead of building one up, tears him down.

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