SummaryJane (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) moves into a house designed by architect (David Oyelowo), but there are very specific rules she must follow in this adaptation of JP Delaney’s novel of the same name.
SummaryJane (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) moves into a house designed by architect (David Oyelowo), but there are very specific rules she must follow in this adaptation of JP Delaney’s novel of the same name.
Despite some of its more predictable twists, The Girl Before is riveting, even counterintuitive. Brühlmann, the director, takes material stuffed with clichés and gives it a subtler texture.
“The Girl Before” doesn’t feel like a conventional mystery and that is its strength. It feels akin to a staged performance, with the character predominately relegated to One Folgate Street. Mbatha-Raw and Plummer are powerhouses in a story that sticks with you because it’s a slice of reality.
J.P. Delaney has stretched his bestseller to four hours, pretty much the bare minimum for calling yourself a TV show, which is at least two hours more time than the story can justify. It’s repetitive, predictable and comfortably outlasts my patience with house-based metaphors.
Though the series boasts a strong cast, slick production design, a haunting score from Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans, and strong material that could make for a captivating four-part limited series, “The Girl Before” feels thematically aimless, in over its head with narrative threads, and more interested in plot twists than creating relatable, believable characters.
The show’s narrative excess comes to seem wasteful and silly — a story about a manipulative architect who wants to help design the lives of the women who live in his construction, and it’s a little boring? And its leveraging of violence against women, including rape, to tell a story that isn’t really worth the time or emotional commitment viewers are asked to make is unfortunate. In all, fans of the book club-thriller genre would be well served by skipping “The Girl Before.”