"The Dead Girl" is an anthology centered around a murdered young lady. There's the stranger who found her (Toni Collette), the medical examiner who believed she was her sister (Rose Byrne), the wife of the killer (Mary Beth Hurt), the mother of the dead girl (Marcia Gay Harden), and the victim herself (Brittany Murphy). We get five separate interconnecting stories in 85 minutes.
The movie had some notable faces. Including the aforementioned there was Josh Brolin, Kerry Washington, Giovanni Ribisi, James Franco, Mary Steenburgen, and Piper Laurie. What the movie didn't have was a real attention grabbing plot. It wasn't a murder mystery in the traditional sense nor was it a thriller. Eventually we find out who the murderer is, but it wasn't as though he was being kept secret, it just wasn't his turn to be shown. No one was pursuing him and it seemed no one cared except the family of the dead girl.
So what do you get out of it? You get a montage of how murder affects the lives of different people. It made Anden (Toni Collette) a local celebrity for finding her. It made Leah (Rose Byrne) a wreck because she thought the woman was her missing sister. It made the killer's wife decide to burn the evidence to protect her husband. It destroyed the victim's mother, and the girl, of course, had her life cut short.
This was a unique way of approaching the issue even if I think the movie could've been better. It seemed a bit too random for me as the movie dropped one subject and picked up another.
Starz.
The movie had some notable faces. Including the aforementioned there was Josh Brolin, Kerry Washington, Giovanni Ribisi, James Franco, Mary Steenburgen, and Piper Laurie. What the movie didn't have was a real attention grabbing plot. It wasn't a murder mystery in the traditional sense nor was it a thriller. Eventually we find out who the murderer is, but it wasn't as though he was being kept secret, it just wasn't his turn to be shown. No one was pursuing him and it seemed no one cared except the family of the dead girl.
So what do you get out of it? You get a montage of how murder affects the lives of different people. It made Anden (Toni Collette) a local celebrity for finding her. It made Leah (Rose Byrne) a wreck because she thought the woman was her missing sister. It made the killer's wife decide to burn the evidence to protect her husband. It destroyed the victim's mother, and the girl, of course, had her life cut short.
This was a unique way of approaching the issue even if I think the movie could've been better. It seemed a bit too random for me as the movie dropped one subject and picked up another.
Starz.