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Dead Girl, The
EMAILPRINTFirst Look Pictures Releasing
Generally favorable reviews
Based on 21 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 14 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama | Mystery | Suspense/Thriller
Written by: Karen Moncrieff
Directed by: Karen Moncrieff
Release Date:
Theatrical: December 29, 2006
DVD: May 15, 2007
Running Time: 94 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
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)
What The Critics Said
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...
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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
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.
