The Dead Girl (2006) Reviews

• Not a revolutionary experience but great acting and strong script

  laraemeadows2007-02-06

  "The Dead Girl", written and directed by Karen Moncrieff, is a haunting story of how six women are affected by the gruesome, untimely death of one young woman. Each affected woman is suffering in their own emotional prison. Arden, Leah, Beverly, Ruth, Rosetta, and Melora all gain new life and opportunity because of their connection to the dead girl. Arden, played by Toni Collette, lives and cares for her abusive mother. Arden's mother, Piper Laurie's character, has such an emotional hold on Arden that she doesn't even feel that she can go on a date with out being humiliated. Arden finds the dead girl on her family's land, and for some reason it gives her new courage to explore a life outside her mother's grasp. After the girl is removed from Arden's family stead, she is taken to the local Medical Examiners Office. The Examiner's intern, Leah, Rose Byrne's character, examines her and believes that she is her long lost sister, missing for 15 years. Struggling to get past her grief since her sister left, believing she is dead finally allows her to get on with her life stalled for so long. She and her mother, Beverley, played by Mary Steenburgen, and father, Bruce Davidson's character, have different methods for struggling with the past. She goes on a date with Derek, played by James Franko, and begins down the road away from her missing sister and into a life of her own! Mary Beth Hurt plays Ruth, a woman trapped in her marriage to an absent bastard by her strong religious convictions. Even after she threatens her husband, Carl, Nick Searcy's character, for being gone all the time and for sleeping around, she is conflicted about leaving him. Of all the characters, she is the most pitiful and deplorable. Her religion stunts her common sense, her past cuts it down completely. At the end of her story I wanted to punch her in the face. Ruth is my favorite character. After the dead girl is identified, her mother, Melora, comes to collect and identify her body. Melora, played by Marsha Gay Harden, finds about her daughter, who ran away years ago, from her girlfriend and co-worker, Rosetta. Together Rosetta, Kerry Washington's character, and Melora collect the remnants of what's left of her daughter's life. Melora's is obviously pained by her daughter's death but her emotions become unraveled when she learns why her daughter left. Finally we meet Brittany Murphy's character, Krista. Krista is the dead girl. Her sad and tragic life can really only lead to Arden's family farm. Choices she made and choices people made for her are equally gut-punching and in the end, who made which decision doesn't matter anymore. All that matters is she died. The writing in "The Dead Girl" leaves you dumbstruck and in pain. It's as if Karen Moncrieff drew a line for each of the characters starting years before the dead girl and stretching years in the future. The dead girl is the point where each of the lines intersect and change direction. At first it seems the women's lives bear no similarities to each other but their differences are only as deep as a coat of paint. Each of them is shackled to the past, tied away from the potential their future holds. They tug on their restraints, waiting for anything to break them free. Each of the stories is full of unspoken fear and a frightening depth. All of the acting in "The Dead Girl" is astoundingly disquieting. Each of the performances is compelling and all of the actors were completely entrenched in character. Marsha Gay Harden's performance is the shining star of this film. Her character is a well mannered, suburban, house wife who learns in the probably the most gut wrenching way about her misjudgments and bad decisions. In a scene where she learns how her bad decision making has hurt her daughter, the surprise and rush of emotion completely changed my view of the character. Her utter desperation and painful honesty made me wish I were in the room to console her. Each of the character's stories is shot in slightly different ways. The difference is subtle, but if you pay attention, you can see it. There is nothing exceptional about the cinematography, but it isn't a big budget movie either. The Dead Girl won't be a revolutionary experience for anyone but it is one to see if you desire a strong plot and noteworthy acting.

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• "The Dead Girl" is full of life

  autobahnsau2006-11-08

  Saw a screening at a film fest in Los Angeles last night and was completely blown away. The quiet intensity of the film draws out the audiences emotions without hitting them over the head with obvious messages. Everything in this film is complex and complicated- even the cooking of a T.V. dinner. The subtle direction and overwhelming combination of acting, cinematography and screenplay lets the film build mystery upon mystery drawing the viewer to its inevitable conclusion. Restating the plot would give too much away, but the lines between life and death and their definitions are definitely called into question in this film. The acting in this film is of the "Oscars all-around" caliber and not one performance is wasted or without passion and skill. Brittany Murphy and Kerry Washington are so incredible you wonder why these women aren't getting more attention. Murphy particularly shines here as a teenage girl trying to control the downward spiral of her life. Marcia Gay Harden is brilliant as usual giving us a multi-layered character that could easily have been overplayed. Mary Beth Hurt offers a stunning and revealing portrait of a deeply conflicted character. Giovanni Ribisi and James Franco give surprising support playing against their normal "type". The cinematography is lushly beautiful, yet also edgy and raw- all a perfect complement to the screenplay. The opening scenes featuring the desert are gripping and breathtaking. They mark a fantastic contrast to the rest of the film. Karen Moncrieff's direction deftly weaves the characters together, revealing small pieces of a mystery bit by bit, never stealing time from the actors and allowing this stellar cast to really shine. If you loved "In The Bedroom" this has a similar pace and feel. This film will knock you sideways while watching it and then will linger with you for days to come.

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• The Search for Ways to Fill Holes in the Soul

  gradyharp2007-05-17

  Karen Moncrief has written and directed this terrifying, searching, agonizing, and exceptionally fine story of the responses of five different people to the discovery of a dead girl. By dividing her story into chapters named after The Stranger, The Daughter, The Mother, The Wife, The Sister, and The Dead Girl she offers us fully realized characters, each of whom is affected by the opening discovery of a mutilated young dead girl's body. The technique of non-linear film is not new, but Moncrief raises it to a new, powerful level, a fact that makes this film one of the more sophisticated and successful of the past few years. Arden (Toni Collette) is a homely frail girl who accidentally discovers the dead girl, taking a necklace from the corpse before reporting the discovery to the police. She is a caretaker for an invalid, foul-mouthed cruel mother (Piper Laurie) who berates Arden for being so ugly and for involving them in a murder case. Arden flees, meets The Stranger Rudy (Giovanni Ribisi), a tattooed, scary appearing guy who is attracted to Arden because she appears so innocent. He courts her with tales of serial killer manners and yet eventually gains Arden's fractured self-perception trust with physical contact. The next chapter introduces Leah (Rose Byrne) who works with Derek (James Franco) in the mortuary where the dead girl's body has been deposited for autopsy. Leah discovers markings on the dead girl that convince her this is the sister who has been missing for 15 years, a fact that her parents (Mary Steenburgen and Bruce Davison) refuse to accept. Leah's tenuous hold on reality is altered by Derek's consolation and physical attention. The Wife episode offers a view of Mary (Mary Beth Hurt) and Carl (Nick Searcy), a married couple with mutual distrust: Mary knows Carl has flings with prostitutes while Carl feels Mary is too controlling. Mary discovers a chest of torn bloody underwear in one of their business Storage Containers, connects the items with Carl in a suspicion that Carl may be related to the death of the dead girl, and burns them. In The Mother we finally meet the true mother Melora (Marcia Gay Harden) of the dead girl Kritsta (Britanny Murphy) as she traces the clues from the body to a seedy motel where she meets Rosetta (Kerry Washington), Krista's roommate and lover, only to discover that the dead Krista ran away from home to become a prostitute and drug addict in response to a childhood abuse problem with her father. Melora is informed that Krista has an illegitimate three-year-old daughter Ashley whom Krista loved and Melora seeks to care for the only remains of the dead girl - her granddaughter and her lover. This film beams with brilliant performances: Collette, Harden, Byrne, Laurie, Hurt, Searcy, Washington, Steenburgen, Franco and Ribisi are poignant in their depiction of damaged people whose lives are altered by the Dead Girl. This is ensemble acting of the finest category. The production values are strong and the director's control of what could have been a meandering saga is firm and keeps the story from becoming sensationalized. This is yet another brilliant little film that deserves a very wide audience. Grady Harp

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• A Nutshell Review: The Dead Girl

  DICK STEEL2007-09-30

  The story brought memories of an old television cult series called Twin Peaks. A dead, blonde girl's body is being discovered in the grasslands of an idyllic village, and this provides the catalyst for the movie as the plot unravels to tell of the stories that centers around that discovery. In summary, it had a total of 5 short stories all inter-weaved through a fragmented timeline, and a host of characters in those stories who have one way or another, played a part in the girl's life, during when she was alive, and after. The Stranger stars Toni Collette as the woman who discovered the body, and how she gets thrust into the media limelight, yet yearning for that freedom to flee from her domineering mother. The Sister tells of a pathologist's inability to fight on and continue her family's believe that her missing sister is still out there somewhere, and not to throw in the towel and give up hope. The Wife will manage to rile you up, with the story of a neglected wife, and her hopes for reconciling with her estranged husband, who prefers gallivanting late at night to spending time with her, and of course, with her decision to protect her husband's secrets to losing him for sure altogether when revealed. And The Mother reminds you that a mother's love knows no bounds. Hurt by her daughter's disappearance, the worse case scenario happens, and Mum has got to heal old wounds. It's a touching short, and I thought one of the most powerful amongst the rest. And rounding it up, like the last pieces of a jigsaw, is The Dead Girl's story, where we see a foul mouthed Brittany Murphy bringing it all on. The movie had excellent performances all round by the ensemble cast, and it doesn't have any big bang moments to shock and awe. It's a dramatic story, rather than a mystery- thriller-whodunnit. I was glad that it didn't go down the torture porn route, although it could have, but didn't need to. Leaving it where it is will already allow your imagination to run wild what the outcome will be. However, this might serve as a let down to some as it might seem that it failed to want to bridge the missing gap in the timeline. Fragmented timeline and multiple, parallel stories do seem to be the rage these days (Babel anyone?), but it all boils down to how much of a story you can make out of a single drop in the pond. That's what The Dead Girl feels like, with the stories the inevitable ripples that fan out. You Are My Sunshine looks like a song very popularly used in end credits, and so far I had thought that it was a simple childhood nursery song. But when used in this context, it had a profound depth telling of longing and missing, that everyone has their own sunshine that they hold very dear to. Recommended movie, especially if you're into the fragmented timeline fad.

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• Electric acting performances in a good story

  OJT2010-08-01

  The Dead Girl was some of a giant shock to me, when I watched it last night. From the first scenes of the film, heartbreakingly beautiful shot in the country terrain where a dead girl is found, making changes in a lot of peoples lives. Turn your feelings on, and buy it or rent it! The film is not a thriller, though it's got a threatening edge all way through. It's a story about life, and to a certain amount death, and reminded me of great films like Crash and Grand Canyon. Though it's something completely different. I'm amazed that this went straight to DVD in my country, because it's such a gem of acting, feelings and torment. I love the nerve of the film, and the only thing lacking here is that I want more in the end! Therefore I'd like to watch the film over again, just to study the acting. The film is beautiful, gritty, heartbreaking, hopeful and has a tone of uncertainty which makes you want it never to end. But it does end, or it gives you a lot of hope. I'd like the film to go on to tell more about every individual in this story. So well written, played and filmed is this, that I really felt I was watching something special. This is a hidden gem, that deserves more praise than it has got. I was completely blown away by the greatness. A quiet intensely and beautifully told film draws out the audiences emotions without making anything too obvious. The acting is really superb, and the direction is first class. The cinematography is a perfect complement to the screenplay. The opening scenes featuring the desert are gripping and breathtaking. This film will linger with you for days to come. It's so well written and played by a star cast where absolutely everyone does their job flawlessly. I must say I was completely mesmerized by the play of Toni Collette, Mary Beth Hurt, Mary Steenburgen, Brittany Murphy, Pier Laurie, Giovani Ribisi, James Franco, Rose Byrne, Kerry Washington as well as the others. Can't wait for more from Karen Moncrieff. With stories like these, she'll be the next woman up for Oscar for best film. Well done!

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