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- HBO Max
- Dec 19, 2021
- HBO Max
- Dec 19, 2021
- HBO Max
- Dec 19, 2021
- HBO Max
- Dec 19, 2021
Season Episodes
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Top Cast
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 16 Critic Reviews
55
38% Positive
6 Reviews
6 Reviews
50% Mixed
8 Reviews
8 Reviews
13% Negative
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 16 Critic Reviews
55
38% Positive
6 Reviews
6 Reviews
50% Mixed
8 Reviews
8 Reviews
13% Negative
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
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.
It is tricky to balance heightened mystery with such weighty subject matter but so far, The Girl Before is an intriguing premise, clinically executed.
“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.
Every man in this drama is awful. ... The women, by contrast, are sympathetic.
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.”
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