| 100 |
TV Guide
All behave in ways that may at first seem incomprehensible, but through Moncrieff's expert storytelling, each woman is finally rendered merely human.
|
| 91 |
Entertainment Weekly
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.
|
| 88 |
Premiere
Jenni Miller
Dark little indie thriller.
|
| 83 |
Christian Science Monitor
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.
|
| 78 |
Austin Chronicle
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.
|
| 75 |
Portland Oregonian
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.
|
| 75 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
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.
|
| 75 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
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.
|
| 75 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
As with her debut feature, "Blue Car," Moncrieff treats sensational material with a disarming matter-of-factness that ultimately makes a deeper impression.
|
| 70 |
The Hollywood Reporter
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.
|
| 70 |
Variety
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.
|
| 70 |
Salon.com
The universe of The Dead Girl is an almost uniformly dreary one, whose women are all either dowdy or whorish.
|
| 70 |
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.
|
| 70 |
Chicago Reader
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.
|
| 63 |
New York Daily News
Darker than the shadow of death.
|
| 63 |
Chicago Tribune
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.
|
| 60 |
Los Angeles Times
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.
|
| 50 |
Wall Street Journal
Stylish, highly accomplished and, thanks to its severely restrained palette, mostly off-putting.
|
| 50 |
San Francisco Chronicle
The film is mired in gloom, not just sadness, but heaviness.
|
| 38 |
New York Post
What happens when several characters' lives intertwine with the maggot-infested corpse of a prostitute in The Dead Girl? A whole lot of crying.
|
| 30 |
The New York Times
Just when it seems as though the language of insult and humiliation couldn’t get any nastier, the movie escalates the barrage.
|
