It follows Dan Gallagher (Michael Douglas), an attorney who cheats on his wife Beth (Anne Archer) with a colleague, Alex Forrest (Glenn Close).

Considered a pop culture phenomenon in the years since its release, the film is also credited for triggering the erotic thriller boom of the late 1980s to the mid 1990s.

After Dan changes their phone number, Alex meets Beth, who has advertised selling their apartment, pretending to be interested in buying it.

After visiting Beth in the hospital, Dan forcibly enters Alex's apartment and attempts to strangle her, but stops short of killing her.

In Meyer's book The View from the Bridge: Memories of Star Trek and a Life in Hollywood, he explains that in late 1986 producer Stanley R. Jaffe asked him to look at the script developed by Dearden, and he wrote a four-page memo making suggestions, including a new ending.

"[11] Ellen Barkin, Debra Winger, Susan Sarandon, Jessica Lange, Judy Davis, Melanie Griffith and Michelle Pfeiffer were also considered for the role.

[12] Close was persistent, and after meeting with Jaffe several times in New York, she was asked to fly out to Los Angeles to read with Michael Douglas in front of Adrian Lyne and Lansing.

She was uncomfortable with the bunny boiling scene, which she thought was too extreme, but she was assured on consulting the psychologists that such an action was entirely possible and that Alex's behavior corresponded to someone who had experienced incestual sexual abuse as a child.

[20][21][22] Close fought against the change for two weeks before eventually giving in on her concerns and filming the new sequence after William Hurt convinced her to do it.

[19][5] Though the ending was not the one she preferred, she acknowledged that the film would not have been as successful without it, because it gave the audience "a sense of catharsis, a hope, that somehow the family unit would survive the nightmare".

[7] While Lyne has stood by the theatrical ending believing it was a "good idea", Dearden and Close have continued to express their dismay.

[23] In 2010, during a cast reunion interview, Close shared that she "never thought of [her character] as a villain"[24] and said: "I wasn't playing a generality.

[25] In 2014, Dearden penned a piece for The Guardian stating that while he does not regret writing the story, he does express his regret for the theatrical ending believing it to be sexist and the way Alex was portrayed in it stating that he didn't want to make her a monster but rather "a sad, tragic, lonely woman, holding down a tough job in an unforgiving city."

[29] The Blu-ray contained several bonus features from the 2002 DVD, including commentary by director Adrian Lyne, cast and crew interviews, a look at the film's cultural phenomenon, a behind-the-scenes look, rehearsal footage, the alternative ending, and the original theatrical trailer.

The website's consensus reads: "A potboiler in the finest sense, Fatal Attraction is a sultry, juicy thriller that's hard to look away from once it gets going.

"[37] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 67 out of 100, based on 16 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.

[39] Janet Maslin of The New York Times lauded Lyne's direction, writing that he "takes a brilliantly manipulative approach to what might have been a humdrum subject and shapes a soap opera of exceptional power.

Most of that power comes directly from visual imagery, for Mr. Lyne is well versed in making anything – a person, a room, a pile of dishes in a kitchen sink – seem tactile, rich and sexy.

So do James Dearden's plausible, nicely observant script, Adrian Lyne's elegantly unforced direction, and Close's beautifully calibrated descent into lunacy.

"[41] Author Susan Faludi discussed the film in Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, arguing that major changes had been made to the original plot in order to make Alex wholly negative, while Dan's carelessness and the lack of compassion and responsibility raised no discussion, except for a small number of men's groups who said that Dan was eventually forced to own up to his irresponsibility in that "everyone pays the piper".

[47] She exhibits impulsive behavior, emotional instability, a fear of abandonment, frequent episodes of intense anger, self-harming, and shifting between idealization and devaluation of others, all of which are characteristic of the disorder.

The degree to which she displays these traits is not necessarily typical, and aggression in people with borderline personality disorder is often directed toward themselves rather than others.

[48] As referenced in Orit Kamir's Every Breath You Take: Stalking Narratives and the Law, "Glenn Close's character Alex is quite deliberately made to be an erotomaniac."

[49] The term "bunny boiler" is used to describe an obsessive, spurned woman, deriving from the scene where it is discovered that Alex has boiled the family's pet rabbit.

[66] On July 2, 2015, Fox announced that a TV series based on the film was being developed by Mad Men writers Maria and Andre Jacquemetton.

[69] On November 11, Lizzy Caplan was announced to play Alex Forrest in the new series and Joshua Jackson joined in January 2022 as Dan Gallagher.