There can be no other film in position one. Fatal Attraction is THE sociopathic film. Glenn Close playing Alex is chilling. And here I end the main body of this list as I started it: early in the movie she slashes her wrists to keep married man Daniel (Michael Douglas) from leaving her . . .
the scene closest to my own experience with Henry. Most of us are familiar with the term “bunny boiler” – it is so common a term for a female sociopath that it even has an entry in the Collins dictionary! That phrase comes from this film in which Alex boils the pet bunny to cause distress to Daniel and his family.
In preparing for the film, Glenn Close was uncomfortable with the bunny boiling scene thinking it too extreme, but she was assured by a number of psychotherapists she consulted that it was absolutely plausible for a sociopath to commit such a horrifying act. The relentless attacking of the victim in this film is certainly representative of the worst sociopaths, though in a lot of cases self-harm is more prevalent as a tool for manipulating those who have been loved-bombed into developing an abnormal attachment to the perpetrator.
