The masterful film, which was also released on DVD this week, sends shivers up your spine and devastates you five times over, then has you longing to wipe the sweat off your brow and start watching all over again.
The Dead Girl (2006)
Runtime: 1 hr 34 mins
Synopsis: THE DEAD GIRL, the new film from acclaimed writer/director Karen Moncrieff (BLUE CAR), is a quintet of stories about seemingly unrelated people whose lives converge around the murder of a young woman. "The Stranger" is about the woman (Toni Collette) who finds the body. The publicity... THE DEAD GIRL, the new film from acclaimed writer/director Karen Moncrieff (BLUE CAR), is a quintet of stories about seemingly unrelated people whose lives converge around the murder of a young woman. "The Stranger" is about the woman (Toni Collette) who finds the body. The publicity generated by the discovery creates an opening for her to break away from her abusive mother's (Piper Laurie) control and form an unlikely bond with the mysterious Rudy (Giovanni Ribisi). "The Sister," a forensics graduate student (Rose Byrne), is torn between her mother's (Mary Steenburgen) pressure to hold onto hope for her abducted sister's return and her longing to move forward with her own life. When she examines the dead girl, she is convinced that she has found the body of her missing sister, finally releasing her from her burden. "The Wife" (Mary Beth Hurt) is trapped in an intense hate/love relationship with her husband (Nick Searcy). A terrible discovery about his connection to the dead girl's murder forces her to confront what she though she knew about him-and herself. "The Mother" (Marcia Gay Harden) searches for answers about her runaway daughter's life and is confronted with a series of revelations that change the course of her own life. She gets help in her quest from another troubled young woman-the prostitute (Kerry Washington) who lived with her daughter. "The Dead Girl" (Brittany Murphy) is a fireball: hyper, volatile, self-destructive and subject to hair-trigger bursts of uncontrollable rage. She also has an innocent and child-like side. She dreams about improving her life and becoming a good mother to her young daughter. The characters in THE DEAD GIRL are linked not only by their connection to a brutal murder but also by the difficult hand that life has dealt them. The film scrutinizes their inner struggles to overcome or surrender to their misfortunes. As in BLUE CAR, Moncrieff creates multidimensional portraits of women as they seesaw emotionally through a tangle of conflicting desires and fears. Riveting and ultimately heartbreaking, THE DEAD GIRL confirms the promise of BLUE CAR, and heralds the arrival of Karen Moncrieff as a major American independent filmmaker. [More]
Genre: Dramas
Starring: Toni Collette, Brittany Murphy, Marcia Gay Harden, James Franco, Josh Brolin
Screenwriter: Karen Moncrieff
Producer: Tom Rosenberg, Henry Winterstern, Gary Lucchesi, Eric Karten, Richard Wright, Kevin Turen
Composer: Adam Gorgoni
DVD Info
Release:
Mar 5, 2008
DVD Features:
- Keep Case
Audio:
- Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround - English
- Subtitles - Spanish
Reviews
The Dead Girl segues from one turgidly-paced, soul-crushing sequence to another with very little reason to continue watching.
Intriguing and unpredictable, this multi-layered film delivers a profound ripple effect as it explores the complexities of anger, grief, denial and retribution
THE DEAD GIRL provides several of terrific actresses with meaty roles and for that reason alone (let alone Moncrieff's fluid direction and solid, if uneven, scripting) it deserves to find an audience.
Unblinking and critical about female-rooted and female-specific concerns.
s she stands, so perversely resistant and so utterly naked, Ruth embodies the grief and torment of being a live girl.
Karen Moncrieff's previous film, the shallow and pretentious Blue Car, in no way prepares you for this superbly acted, emotionally acute picture.
With The Dead Girl, this technique of breaking the narrative apart and then piecing it back together has led to a sort of narrative vacuum at its center -- an empty hole where a thing called exposition would typically reside.
The five-story format is intriguing, the performances first rate, and a couple of the stories, particularly those involving Collette, Harden and Washington, are moving.
Those who pass on The Dead Girl are missing something. Moncrieff has assembled a remarkable (and mostly female) cast, and there are moments in this film that are as powerful as anything currently in theaters.
The stories don't exactly add up to anything you can put your finger on, but they're absorbing as they're happening, and director Karen Moncrieff has a smooth, sure visual style.
Growing less lurid and more poignant as it builds its story through a series of linked vignettes, this film by Karen Moncrieff provides a showcase for its predominantly female cast.
Some chapters are more useful than others, but I'm not sure you could omit any of them, either, as each stroke provides a color that contributes to the overall picture.
Five stories compose the heart of "The Dead Girl," Karen Moncreiff's disturbing new drama that's so unsettling, it likely will leave those who see it in an unqualified funk.
Moncrieff never gets melodramatic with subject matter that easily could have been; she won’t make you feel good, but she will make you feel.
Moncrieff manages to get beneath the skin of several of these characters, a nifty trick considering what a crowded world she's created. In all, it's a grueling, emotionally taxing, discomfiting film.
All Screams aside, movies about serial killing are rarely chipper affairs. But few are as glum as The Dead Girl.
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