‘If she were dead, I would know it in my heart…’
I’ll be honest I’ve had enough of dead girls. As a horror fanatic, I’ve seen girls murdered in all sorts of gruesome and grisly ways. I’ve seen them chopped, crushed, sliced and diced. I’m tired of it—particularly the stuff in the true crime genre. The Dead Girl is an interesting film with an interesting narrative structure. It’s well-acted, competently shot and lit and approaches a tired genre in an innovative way. But boy, is it depressing…
Split into five segments (The Stranger, The Sister, The Wife, The Mother and finally, The Dead Girl), Karen Moncrieff’s film examines the fallout of a murder from all sides in a series of intertwining stories. A talented cast made up of Josh Brolin, Brittany Murphy, Toni Collette and Rose Byrne (as well as Giovanni Ribsi, James Franco, Mary Steenburgen and Piper Laurie) do justice to the severity of the subject matter in a film that is desperately short on hope.
The Dead Girl is a successful film in that it is visceral and emotive and all the rest of it, but I’m not sure what is gained from this film other than another dead girl onscreen. I suppose Moncrieff goes to great efforts to flesh out the victim but the fact that it is Brittany Murphy playing the eponymous dead girl only makes the whole thing even more grim (Murphy herself died tragically young just a few years after the release of this movie). Watch with caution.
