“Whirlpool is a suspense melodrama, moody and sinister, and the most overtly psychological of Otto Preminger's film noirs. Gene Tierney stars as the wife of a famous psychologist and is herself a kleptomaniac. She becomes a patient (and victim) of a quack doctor who, through hypnosis, directs her at will in the cover-up of a murder he committed. In a possessed performance, Tierney searches desperately for some contact with reality, making her the ultimate Preminger heroine. As the film title suggests, she is caught in a violent, whirling maelstrom that threatens to suck her under forever...” American Film Institute