Review of The Dead Girl

When the middle-aged Arden (Tony Collette) finds the dead body of a young woman dumped in her property in the rural area in Los Angeles, she calls the police and becomes famous in the local town. While shopping in the supermarket, Arden meets the employee Rudy (Giovanni Ribisi) that invites her for a date. Arden accepts the invitation of the stranger and faces her dominating abusive mother and moving from her home to a new town. While preparing the body to the autopsy in the morgue, the depressive coroner Leah (Rose Byrne) believes she is her sister missing for fifteen years, and she accepts for the first time the invitation for a party in the house of her colleague Derek (James Franco). She changes her behavior and attitude; however, when she discovers that the girl is actually called Krista, she tries to convince her mother Beverly (Mary Steenburgen) to accept that her sister is dead. Meanwhile, an old woman finds evidences in the storage where her husband works that he may be a serial killer. The mother of Krista, Melora (Marcia Gay Harden), goes to the precinct and snoops on the documentation the last address of her daughter. She visits the place and meets the roommate of Krista, the prostitute Rosetta (Kerry Washington), and discovers that she has a three year-old granddaughter, Ashley (Elizabeth Pernoll). Last but not the least, the last day of Krista (Brittany Murphy) is disclosed including the identity of her killer.

"The Dead Girl" is an original low-budget movie, with a screenplay divided in five segments named: "The Stranger", "The Sister", "The Wife", "The Mother" and "The Dead Girl". The story is very simple and real, with great performances and direction, giving full credibility to the plot relative to changes in entwined lives triggered by the discovery of a corpse of a young woman. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "A Garota Morta" ("The Dead Girl")