Netflix Movies with Bizarre Revenge Endings

I watched a couple of Netflix shows, Windfall and Anatomy of a Scandal. They did not appear to have the usual queer interracial sex scenes that have become so common on Netflix.

In both, a decent man has a great deal of personal adversity, and his wife is mostly loyal. And at the end, the wife explodes and becomes the most despicable person in the movie.

In Windfall, the wife murders her husband. There is no motive given, except to steal some of his money. She was already living in luxury and treated very well.

In Anatomy, the wife is even weirder. She seems to forgive her husband for having an affair, but then cannot forgive him for a very minor lie he told in court (he denied using the word "prick-tease"). So she finds a prosecutor with an old grudge against him, and conspires to frame him for something that happened 20 years earlier, so as to send him to prison and so she can take the kids.

I don't mind a good revenge movie, but in these movies, the revenge is against the most admirable character, and the reasons are not explained. You can infer that the Windfall wife has an unhappy marriage and wants out, but she is the one misleading her husband into thinking they will have a baby while she is taking birth control pills. She can get out without murdering her husband.

You can infer the Anatomy wife feels betrayed and wants the truth out, but that is not true. She does not reveal the truth about the prosecutor with a grudge, or of her own complicity in covering up the events of 20 years previously.

That 20-year-old incident appears to be just an accident, and it is not clear that there would be any evidence implicating anyone of a crime. The wife would be seen as a bitter jealous woman getting revenge for her husband having an affair.

Both movies end with the impression that the wife gets away with her revenge, but it is not clear. The Windfall wife could go to prison for murder. The Anatomy wife could be blamed for false accusations, and covering up unethical behavior.

I searched online movie reviews, and most people hated the endings to both of these shows.

I am trying to figure out whom these shows are supposed to appeal to. My guess is that they are trying to make a feminist man-hater statement, by showing a wife destroy her husband whether he deserves it or not. I doubt that there is really much of an audience for that. I did not see any reviews that said, "I enjoyed seeing a woman destroy a good husband at the end."

I am not saying that movies need to have happy endings, or be predictable. My objection is to movies that have some sort of heavy-handed moral message in its ending, and that message is a horrible one. It is hard to imagine anyone agreeing with what the wives do in these movies. And yet the movies present these endings as if the wives achieved justice somehow.