This Canadian quickie, starring mostly Canadian actors, deserves a look-see, even with Daniel Baldwin on board. Nathan Fillion plays a writer who has lost a child and moves with his wife to a small town that turns out to have more secrets than Carter has liver pills. The incredibly sexy Chandra West plays the wife and the even sexier Emmanuele Vaughier plays a femme fatale who intrudes in their lives. Baldwin is the corrupt town mayor. Vaughier and Fillion share a lakeside seduction scene that is hotter than hell, and a reminder why you don't usually see this film running in the daytime. It's A TOWN WITHOUT PITY for the new millennium, and holds up fairly well on a rewatch. I know it was not intentional, but there is a a very funny foot chase scene a little more than halfway through involving Fillion and the local sheriff. This ain't THE HOT SPOT and Fillion isn't Don Johnson, but it will do for what looks like a made-for-cable movie. Vaughier (or West, for that matter) is welcome to drug and seduce me any day.

This is one of those movies that if someone I really liked hadn't been in it, I would have stopped watching it. It was creepy in a not-enjoyable way (I'm not a fan of movies about women being assaulted), and there were too many times when I thought, "That's dumb. Why are they doing that?" For example, when someone decides to put a body in a car & push it in the water, instead of reporting the incident to the police (I'm being intentionally vague here in order to avoid major spoilers). It's full of movie clichés- someone you think is dead isn't, someone you think is good isn't, someone you think is guilty isn't, small-town folks band together, etc. Nathan Fillion, as always, shines. This movie could have been much better with just a little effort (better writing, mostly, probably better directing too). Disappointing.

**SPOILERS** Moving into his dad's old hunting cottage outside of Reedsville Robert and his wife Molly are trying to put their lives back together since the tragic death of their daughter. Robert feels that the peace and quite of the country would give him the inspiration to write the great American Novel and get both him and Molly out of debt from the expenses of keeping their daughter alive on life-support. Molly's depression starts to become suicidal and one afternoon she loads a shotgun and tries to blow her brains out. Robert, coming home after being out on the lake writing, sees that the gun was loaded and, knowing Molly's unstable state of mind, flips out and runs into the woods with the shotgun to get his thoughts together.Sitting alone in a clearing Robert sees a police car pull up and the sheriff pulls out this young woman and is about to smash her head in with rock when he interrupts the obvious attempted murder by blowing, after warning him to stop, the cop sheriff Dodd away. Taking the young woman home to get her patched up, she was badly beaten up by Dodd, both Robert & Molly find out that the woman, Rae Baines, worked in the office of the mayor of Reedsville Mayor Block. It's later when Robert goes to dispose of Dodd's body and patrol car that he finds a bag with $200,000.00 and a bunch of photos of Rea and the mayor in a number of compromising positions; was she blackmailing him and Sheffif Dodd working for Mayor Block was to kill her on orders from up high to shut Rea up for good?The movie "Waters Edge" goes on with Rea manipulating the somewhat foolish Robert in trying to split him up from his wife Molly and the blackmail money. Molly later finds out, at the Reedsville Public Libery, that Rea was actually working with her husband Bobbie, the town's official photographer, who was later found dead in the trunk of Sheriff Dodd's patrol car. The two were the ones involved in blackmailing Mayor Block not this local power and control freak T. Wallace, who runs the towns feed store, as Rea told Robert.Later Robert gets taken back to town by Officer Campball for questioning in Dodd's death. It's then when he quickly realizes that he's being set up, by the town's mayor and is henchmen like Campball & Wallace, to not only take the rap for Dodd's murder, who Robert shot in self-defense. But thats not real reason for his troubles with the corrupt Mayor Block & Co. It's the $200,000.00 in blackmail money and photos that Robert has hidden in his cottage that is. Meanwhile back at the cottage Rea, showing her true colors, has the helpful and kind-hearted Molly knocked out and tied up, after an eye-popping and ferocious cat-fight with her, and dropped into the lake with a heavy weight tied to her body and left to drown. Robert who made a run from it from both Campball and T.Wallace is captured and made to go back to his cottage and get the money and incriminating photos that the mayor wants so badly. It's then that Robert finds out that Rea, who was there looking for the same things, is not the innocent soul that she said she was. It's then that he has it out with both her and the Mayor and his corrupt crew of law enforcers in the movie's fiery conclusion. There's a lot of holes in the plot of "Waters Edge" that make the story a bit hard to swallow as well as the very unconvincing and ham acting of both Emmanuelle Vaugler & Daniel Baldwin as Rea and the Mayor. But actor Nathan Fillion as Robert keeps your mind off them by his taking the role he has, as an innocent man on the run, deadly serious and not trying to sleep walk his way through the film in order to just collect a check.

Nicely paced drama with tense to intense moments. Excellent casting and location make for superb ingredients of an unfolding rural mystery. The human conditions of broken dreams, empathy, greed, and love play major roles in fleshing out the characters brought together in this small place, in this small moment ... in time.The major characters of Robert, Molly, and Rae flow downstream in increasing torrents of emotional whitewater, as jutting rocks of sex, murder, and deceitful suspense reveal themselves. Nice "Hitchcock-tonian" touch applied with a goateed Daniel Baldwin playing the shrewd small-town Mayor. [ What better way to accentuate a drama/mystery than applying a 'lil Daniel .... with those piercing blue eyes !?! ]In my opinion, the climax was a bit "watered down" , but as in Life ... all is not as we might have hoped for , but as we have wrought , going up... only .... to the edge .Good move by the producers to change the title to the present one from the former ... "Wicked Season" . Vive la Canadiens ! Bringing us all .... to the Waters Edge ....