The Dead Girl: Critic Reviews

Moncrieff (Blue Car) 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.

The relentless emotional violence in this film, a compendium of five vignettes related to a young woman whose corpse is discovered on a hillside, is of a level rarely found in movies.

The chief problem with The Dead Girl, as with most current multipart films, is that the truncated stories don't give actors much room to develop a part. They're on-screen for such a short time that they act furiously from the get-go.

Works like a package of crisp, individual psychological profiles of the women whose already troubled lives are disrupted by the murder.

The Dead Girl has such a glacial pace, and with such tonal monotony -- most of the first 20 minutes are either grim, in the dark or both -- that audiences will follow at their peril.

All Screams aside, movies about serial killing are rarely chipper affairs. But few are as glum as The Dead Girl.

The use of multiple plots can be a dangerous exercise if not skillfully executed, making viewers feel cheated and wanting more, but Moncrieff works it out, ably shifting from one story to the next and keeping us satisfied with the open-ended outcomes.

A stern account of how the brutal murder of a young woman affects an array of far-flung characters.

Seeing multiple responses to a sexually motivated murder allows us to reconsider our understanding of sex crimes.

Ms. Moncrieff's ambitious second film is a bit of a disappointment after the promise shown in her more tightly structured debut effort, Blue Car.

Pic's weak ending demonstrates that its multi-narrative strategy, though full of cinematic potential, also holds traps for a film's overall impact.

Occasionally the movie manages to achieve a real sadness, but some story lines are forced.

Murphy, devouring a bad girl role to go with her image, makes her the most alive person in what is most certainly not your typical Hollywood serial killer movie.

There's no mistaking the integrity and craft on display here, and the writing and direction are too smart to dismiss The Dead Girl as victimology or man-hating.

Moncrieff chooses to scrutinize highly unpleasant material but, fortunately, she never takes an exploitative or sensationalistic approach. The movie has its integrity.

Moncrieff never gets melodramatic with subject matter that easily could have been; she won't make you feel good, but she will make you feel.

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.

A dreary Chick Flick serial killer film, that puts a human face on the vic as it focuses on all the women affected by the serial killer.

The tone is fittingly dark, the writing impressively poetic, and the performances excellent absolutely across the board.

The masterful film, which was also released on DVD this week, sends shivers up your spine and devastates you five times over, then has you longing to wipe the sweat off your brow and start watching all over again.

The Dead Girl segues from one turgidly-paced, soul-crushing sequence to another with very little reason to continue watching.

Intriguing and unpredictable, this multi-layered film delivers a profound ripple effect as it explores the complexities of anger, grief, denial and retribution

THE DEAD GIRL provides several of terrific actresses with meaty roles and for that reason alone (let alone Moncrieff's fluid direction and solid, if uneven, scripting) it deserves to find an audience.