The Dead Girl

[TylerDurden182]

Director: Karen Moncrieff

Starring: Toni Collette, Brittany Murphy, Marcia Gay Harden, Rose Byrne, James Franco, Josh Brolin, Giovanni Ribisi, Kerry Washington, Mary Steenburgen

Plot Outline: The clues to a young woman's death come together as the lives of seemingly unrelated people begin to intersect.

[Moviefan1234]

I think this movie looks excellent. I love this cast, and the premise sounds very interesting.

[RandalGraves]

Might check this out in theaters...if not, def on dvd

[JCPhoenix]

I was a little disappointed that the different strands didn't really link up much (essentially the five parts in the movie are just linked by the dead girl in some way and that's it...the movie is really five separate short stories) but I was still engrossed in the movie. I liked what they were trying to do with the end of the film but I thought their execution left something to be desired...it just felt too abrupt.

A lot of great performances though in the film. Brittany Murphy pulls off quite a memorable performance, though one that occasionally seems to be trying a little too hard...still, she has a kind of spark that really livens up her character...I also really liked Toni Collette in the first section, despite the fact that she plays the wispy sort of character stereotype that you tend to see more often in indie films. Really the whole cast was fantastic as Marcia Gay Harden and Kerry Washington were equally strong in their part of the film (The Mother).

In fact, my favorite stories were probably the middle two ("The Wife" and "The Mother")...the first one didn't have any actors that I'm familiar with but it had an interesting creepy and unsettling tone to it that really disturbed me though I'm not sure it really went anywhere...and the second one was perhaps the best of the five stories as it was quite moving and probably the most fully-formed of the five. Despite Murphy's interesting performance, I found her segment (The Dead Girl) still probably the weakest, followed by Rose Byrne and James Franco's segment (The Sister) whereas Toni Collette/Giovanni Ribisi's would be squarely in the middle (The Stranger).

7/10