AFI Fest

By the movie's end, writer-director Karen Moncrieff's "The Dead Girl" delivers considerable emotional impact. But that doesn't mean you've enjoyed the journey. Moncrieff chooses to scrutinize highly unpleasant material but, fortunately, she never takes an exploitative or sensationalistic approach. The movie has its integrity. Her female characters are deeply troubled individuals, and there is little to comfort viewers that any of these lives might turn around or improve. Yet Moncrieff views these people, these victims, with compassionate understanding.

While Moncrieff spares you gruesome details, she demands that you look at what happens to people seemingly out of control of their lives and obsessions, who get caught up in fateful chain of events that can come to no good. The First Look release, which debuted at AFI Fest, opens Dec. 29 in Los Angeles and New York before a January national rollout. Despite an impressive cast, only adventurous adult viewers will head to art houses for "Dead Girl."

The movie unfolds in five vignettes about seemingly unrelated people. It soon is clear enough that these lives are connected to a dead girl discovered in a vacant field. You further suspect the murder to be the work of a serial killer.

Serial killers are an old staple in crime novels and movie thrillers, but such Hannibal Lecters are fictional monsters, good for quick chills and a laugh. Moncrieff will have none of this; she is after the horrifyingly mundane reality of victims, killers and those tragically connected to either or both.

Each vignette focuses on a central female character. Arden (Toni Collette) discovers the body, but her lonely life as a caretaker to her ill, abusive mother (Piper Laurie) is turned upside down by reporting her discovery to police. Her mother is furious, and she attracts unwanted attention from strangers, including a grocery store clerk (Giovanni Ribisi) who confuses his sexual desire with an obsession with serial killers. Arden is just lonely enough in life to give herself to this man.

Leah (Rose Byrne) is a forensics grad student who, when confronted with the mutilated body of the dead girl, thinks that perhaps she might be her young sister who went missing so many years before. Gruesome as it would be, this discovery would at least bring closure for her and her parents (Mary Steenburgen, Bruce Davison), who still wallow in denial.

An aging couple, Ruth (Mary Beth Hurt) and her husband Carl (Nick Searcy), quarrel constantly over Carl's constant absences at night. Then she discovers one unit in the storage facility Carl runs contains ominous personal effects belonging to young women.

Melora (Marcia Gay Harden) comes to Los Angeles searching for answers about the dead girl, who was her runaway daughter. She meets the daughter's roommate, Rosetta (Kerry Washington), a battered hooker, and learns a piece of news that changes her life. Finally, in a flashback, the movie shows the last day in the life of Krista (Brittany Murphy), a woman riven by violence, drug use and severe psychological issues yet desperate to reclaim her innocence.

The story is set in Los Angeles, but Moncrieff has selected the most desolate, almost barren urban landscape imaginable. Here people lead hopeless, angry lives, never certain what went wrong or, worse, how to repair them. There is a suggestion of hope in the mother-roommate vignette. In this sequence alone, people are lead to understand what happened and how they might salvage their lives.

Cinematographer Michael Grady and designer Kristan Andrews subtly depict this world of isolation with just the right tones, details and compositions that that link environment to character.

THE DEAD GIRL
First Look Pictures
Lakeshow Entertainment/Pitbull Pictures
Credits:
Screenwriter-director: Karen Moncrieff
Producers: Richard Wright, Eric Karten, Kevin Turen, Tom Rosenberg, Henry Winterstern, Gary Lucchesi
Director of photography: Michael Grady
Production designer: Kristan Andrews
Music: Adam Gorgoni
Costume designer: Susie DeSanto
Editor: Toby Yates
Cast:
Krista: Brittany Murphy
Arden: Toni Collette
Rudy: Giovanni Ribisi
Mother: Piper Laurie
Leah: Rose Byrne
Beverly: Mary Steenburgen
Bill: Bruce Davison
Ruth: Mary Beth Hurt
Carl: Nick Searcy
Melora: Marcia Gay Harden
Rosetta: Kerry Washington
Tarlow: Josh Brolin
Running time -- 93 minutes
MPAA rating: R

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