
In Los Angeles, a story about a dead girl, told in five chapters. A woman, miserable in her circumscribed life caring for her domineering mother, finds a body. Somehow, this discovery allows her to change. At the morgue, the sister of a girl missing for 15 years believes the body is that of her sister; this liberates her. An older woman, married to a man who pays her little attention, finds evidence in a storage unit; how will she handle it? The mother of the dead girl, who l... (Full plot summary below)
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In Los Angeles, a story about a dead girl, told in five chapters. A woman, miserable in her circumscribed life caring for her domineering mother, finds a body. Somehow, this discovery allows her to change. At the morgue, the sister of a girl missing for 15 years believes the body is that of her sister; this liberates her. An older woman, married to a man who pays her little attention, finds evidence in a storage unit; how will she handle it? The mother of the dead girl, who left home some years before, visits the last place her daughter lived and makes her own discoveries. Last, we flash back to the victim's final day.
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| TV Guide MagazineKen FoxAll behave in ways that may at first seem incomprehensible, but through Moncrieff's expert storytelling, each woman is finally rendered merely human. |
| Newark Star-LedgerStephen WhittyMessy and melodramatic, then quiet and contained -- The Dead Girl is definitely unpredictable. But then so is life. And [director Karen] Moncrieff gives us five fat slices of it here, all full of painful color and inconvenient drama. |
| New York ObserverAndrew SarrisMs. Moncrieff's ambitious second film is a bit of a disappointment after the promise shown in her more tightly structured debut effort, Blue Car. |
| Arizona Daily StarPhil VillarrealThe 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. |
| Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam ArnoldThe film is also an impressive showcase for a large ensemble cast that also includes Josh Brolin, James Franco and Kerry Washington. The standout, however, is Hurt, who gives an almost unbelievably courageous performance as the movie's least sympathetic character. |
| The Coast (Halifax, Nova Scotia)Tara ThorneThere's not a laugh to be had, but the humanist Moncrieff is grabbing for your heart, rarely showing violence but letting the potential of it seep in from every corner, making fear itself the uncredited star. |
| Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanMoncrieff 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. |
| Bangor Daily News (Maine)Christopher SmithFive stories compose the heart of "The Dead Girl," Karen Moncreiff's disturbing new drama that's so unsettling, it likely will leave those who see it in an unqualified funk. |
| Reel Film ReviewsDavid Nusair...there's little doubt that the movie cements [Karen Moncrieff's] status as one of the most promising new filmmakers to come around in ages. |
| L.A. WeeklyJim RidleyMoncrieff's glum, somber film is something of a needed corrective at the moment, when horror movies are turning into weightless exercises in morally sanctioned sadism. |