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Dead Girl, The
First Look Pictures Releasing


6.9

based on 21 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 14 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

FILM:

Blue Car

MPAA RATING: R for language, grisly images and sexuality/nudity

Starring Toni Collette, Brittany Murphy, Marcia Gay Harden, Rose Byrne, James Franco, Josh Brolin, Giovanni Ribisi, Kerry Washington, Mary Steenburgen, Mary Beth Hurt, Piper Laurie, and Nick Searcy

The Dead Girl is a quintet of stories about seemingly unrelated people whose lives converge around the murder of a young woman. (First Look Pictures)

GENRE(S):	Drama \| Mystery \| Suspense/Thriller
WRITTEN BY:	Karen Moncrieff
DIRECTED BY:	Karen Moncrieff
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: May 15, 2007 Theatrical: December 29, 2006
RUNNING TIME:	94 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

Nominated, Best Director, Best Picture and Best Supporting Female (Hurt), 2007 Independent Spirit Awards

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

TV Guide Ken Fox

All behave in ways that may at first seem incomprehensible, but through Moncrieff's expert storytelling, each woman is finally rendered merely human.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Moncrieff pushes a view of women as victims that might create its own pornography of masochism if it didn't touch so many authentic shattered nerve endings.

Premiere Jenni Miller

Dark little indie thriller.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

The cast is something of an indie movie hall of fame that includes Giovanni Ribisi, Mary Steenburgen, Brittany Murphy, and Toni Collette. Marcia Gay Harden is particularly fine as the murdered girl's mother.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

There is no surprise or justice or sense to the whole thing. Just sadness. And a sense of all the lonely people and where they all come from.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

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.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

The film is also an impressive showcase for a large ensemble cast that also includes Josh Brolin, James Franco and Kerry Washington. The standout, however, is Hurt, who gives an almost unbelievably courageous performance as the movie's least sympathetic character.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

A challenging film populated with characters who are depressed, on antidepressants, or strung out on mood-altering drugs, The Dead Girl is a downer with resonance.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

As with her debut feature, "Blue Car," Moncrieff treats sensational material with a disarming matter-of-factness that ultimately makes a deeper impression.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

By the movie's end, writer-director Karen Moncrieff's The Dead Girl delivers considerable emotional impact. But that doesn't mean you've enjoyed the journey.

Variety Robert Koehler

More ambitious than her 2002 debut, "Blue Car," Moncrieff's new film maintains her focus on women, expanding to include a range of ages, circumstances and psychologies. Picture's drama, however, is deliberately fractured into a quintet of stories that vary considerably in their overall impact.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

The universe of The Dead Girl is an almost uniformly dreary one, whose women are all either dowdy or whorish.

Village Voice Jim Ridley

Moncrieff's glum, somber film is something of a needed corrective at the moment, when horror movies are turning into weightless exercises in morally sanctioned sadism.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Confounds expectations -- about slasher stories and about film narrative in general, in part by being closer to a collection of interconnected short stories than to a novel.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Darker than the shadow of death.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

The way Moncrieff has structured The Dead Girl, it's catnip for actors: Divided into five chapters, the script affords juicy roles requiring only a few days' work from each member of its impressive ensemble.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Crust

If the segments are uneven, Moncrieff -- with the help of her excellent cast -- nevertheless crafts a gripping overall narrative that exposes a shared dissonance among the protagonists.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Stylish, highly accomplished and, thanks to its severely restrained palette, mostly off-putting.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

The film is mired in gloom, not just sadness, but heaviness.

New York Post Kyle Smith

What happens when several characters' lives intertwine with the maggot-infested corpse of a prostitute in The Dead Girl? A whole lot of crying.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

Just when it seems as though the language of insult and humiliation couldn’t get any nastier, the movie escalates the barrage.

The average user rating for this movie is 6.9 (out of 10) based on 14 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Callen K. gave it a10:
A terrific movie from start to finish. The acting is wonderful throughout and the plot lines are fresh. This is a woman's movie par excellence.

Stephen S. gave it a7:
How come the critic reviews and user comments average in the 60s, as compared with the 70s scored by Blue Car, Moncrieff’s interesting but wrong-footed debut? Sure, one’s heart sinks, as CSI: Miami flashbacks occur when the technician examines the dehumanized girl on the slab. But, aided by an unexpectedly fine turn from Brittany Murphy, the troubled victim becomes much more like us in her life-altering small derangements, and we come closer to her. Not immaculately dovetailed in its semi-interlocking segments, but well shot and indicating a committed talent to follow.

Be Q. gave it a1:
This movie starts with the anticipation of good development of a story. However, it tanks at the end. This reminds me of the movie "Crash" in that is has separate vignettes of each character - but that is as close as it gets to Crash (good movie). Don't bother trying to find any answers - nothing is really related nor interconnecting - it's just garbage.

Michael L. gave it a9:
Excellent film with an excellent cast. Yes, it's unpleasant, but it's real. The dysfunction and damage family systems create can wreak havock on lives for generations to come. This is truly a horror film--with a brain, unlike Eli Roth's torture porn. Because we know these people and we know these situations. Thank God there are filmmakers with intellect who are brave enough to tell stories that effect us more deeply than watching someone dismembered by a chainsaw.

Tayborne L. gave it a3:
In the neo-indy tradition of racing to to bottom and trying to hit the most depressing note thats possible, this film succeeds. In term of being artful about it, ya, it's well made. But it still aims for the bottom, which is easy. The film makers here took the easy way out.

James M. gave it a4:
Grim, bleak and uninvolving film whose premise is better than its execution. Given the divergent, fractured narrative, those involved are given to histrionics to compensate for the inherent shallowness. Mercifully brief at 90 minutes or so, although the opening sequence is so lifeless and inert, that those who choose to continue will inevitably be checking their watch.

Chad S. gave it an8:
The title, as we soon learn, is metaphorical as well as literal. There's more than one dead girl in "The Dead Girl". Six or seven, actually; more than one per chapter in some cases. During the first story, we can see that Arden's mother(Piper Laurie, reviving the role she played in "Carrie") murdered her daughter(Toni Collette) a long time ago. Next up is Leah(Rose Byrne), a coroner-in-training, who(along with her mother) died the day her younger sister went missing. She'd rather hang out with corpses than with James Franco. Both women are on the verge of being reborn when it's thought that the "Jane Doe" Leah is working on might be their missing family member. "The Dead Girl" is not so much a downer, but it can be sobering, especially the final story; the story of the "dead girl", who ironically, turns out to be the most alive girl in the story. Krista(Brittany Murphy) had a hard-knock life, but she was, as they say, making lemonade out of lemons. Murphy is fierce. She really loved Rosetta(Kerry Washington). In life, Ruth(Mary Beth Hurt, from the chapter "The Wife"), stuck with her scumbag of a husband(Nick Searcy), is dying the slow death of an underappreciated housewife. "The Dead Girl" is always intelligent, always dead-on about the facts of life...and death.

Dead Girl, The First Look Pictures Releasing

Dead Girl, The
First Look Pictures Releasing