There have been a hundred thrillers like Greta. Stories about dangerous obsessives and psychological manipulation reliant on plot misdirects and suspense over character and genuine horror. Watching this new film from The Crying Game and Interview with a Vampire director Neil Jordan, I was often reminded of movies like Vertigo, Cape Fear, One Hour Photo, and Misery. In the shadow of these and many others, Greta struggles with finding its own identity, though it does make some valiant attempts.
A young New York waitress, Frances McCullen (Chloe Grace Moretz) finds an abandoned purse on the subway. She returns it to its owner, a lonely French widow Greta Hideg (Isabelle Huppert), and the two strike up an unconventional friendship. However Frances soon discovers a deeply disturbing side of Greta and in her attempt to cut ties, only fuels Greta’s crazed obsession and stalker tendencies towards her.
Beneath its’ intense exterior, Greta is a movie about loss and how people cope with it. Both Frances and Greta are recovering from close family tragedies, unable to quite move past the trauma, and it’s the primary thing that bonds them. However it’s a theme that Jordan doesn’t know how to make interesting, and as it gets lost in the heat of shifting circumstances and dangers, the film ultimately has nothing to say about it. The clear perverse surrogate mother-daughter motif is also uninspired and without much substance; when at a point Frances is completely disillusioned as to the nature of their relationship, consistently victimized and psychologically abused, there’s nothing left to compel you, and it becomes more or less just another deranged person terrorizing an innocent.
And yet the film is expertly claustrophobic and utilizes its’ suspense well. Greta’s house is especially imposing and mysterious, hidden away, architecturally and literally apart from society. And the interior is almost labyrinthine. Elsewhere in the film there are some excellently built and creative scenes of tension, such as a sequence where Greta ominously texts Frances with pictures of her roommate Erica (Maika Monroe) out at a club, or when Greta shows up unexpectedly at Frances’ restaurant to force a confrontation. Predictably of course there’s some commentary on the ineffectualness of Manhattan police officers in how they respond to Frances’ fears and complaints. But it works to sell the mood of discomfort and vulnerability, conveying at least a degree of the emotion and terror of having a stalker.
A lot of that is relayed through Chloe Grace Moretz’s performance, another in a string of challenging roles for the young actress, and in which she proves herself incredibly capable as her character is forced through terrifying circumstances. As good as Moretz is though, she’s unsurprisingly overshadowed by Isabelle Huppert, a fairly recent discovery in North America, but a legend of French cinema. Huppert is equal parts mesmerizing and terrifying as the unhinged Greta. Without changing the intonation or mannerisms of the character, she manages to come off fairly genuine and kind (if a bit socially inept) at first, but also deviously cunning, dangerously unpredictable, and monstrous later on. Rather than wonder how Frances could possibly befriend Greta, you fully comprehend how effective her manipulations are. There’s also a tangible familiarity to her former behaviour and interactions with Frances. We’ve all met someone a little like Greta and that is something unsettling.
The cast also features Colm Feore and Zawe Ashton. Maika Monroe is pretty good, starting off as a clichéd vain best friend before ultimately breaking out of that type. And being a Neil Jordan movie it’s unsurprising to see Stephen Rea turn up. But his role is completely meaningless and the detour involving his character could be cut entirely without the story losing anything. It doesn’t help that Rea seems bored for the duration of his subplot, even for an actor who’s usually an underperformer.
Greta very much wants to stand out. It leans into the strange a couple times and employs some stylish editing and narrative devices. There’s one part of the film for instance that tries to blur the lines of reality for no justifiable reason presumably other than it’s something that’s been done in great thrillers like Perfect Blue or the films of David Lynch. The employment of such choices here doesn’t enhance the experience, in fact they distract and just emphasize how confused the movie is.
It’s not hard to see how Greta could have been good. The performances are engaging and the suspense is there; the film’s not badly written and I appreciate its reluctance to give the audience easy answers as to why Greta behaves the way she does. But it aims for more than it can deliver on, which coupled with an ordinary premise and a fluctuating execution, makes for a movie I’m glad I saw, but one that will be eventually forgotten in the shadow of giants.
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