It's interesting how much you can glean about a movie by watching the trailer once you start paying attention to them. The subtleties in the editing, tone and revealed plot details can help you go, "Oh, so it's a [insert popular genre or trope] kind of movie." Once you get the hang of trailer analysis you can get to a point where you can predict the entire plot, what its high and low points will be and, most importantly, how much you will personally enjoy it. The trailer for "Greta" had me thoroughly convinced that although the idea presented was interesting I would ultimately walk out of the theater bored and disappointed. A case of wasted potential like so many other horror films before it, killed by an over-serious tone and pace that drags on like a bathroom break at Taco Bell. However, there are times when you're only half right.
After finding a lost purse on the subway, Frances (Chloë Grace Moretz) tracks down the owner, who happens to be an elderly European woman named Greta (Isabelle Huppert). Frances and Greta begin a friendship that swiftly becomes uncomfortable as Greta becomes more invasive and clingy.
The strongest area of the film is how it builds up its tone. The story perfectly captures the situation of a one-sided friendship, where you're not at all interested in a relationship but the other person continues to try and force it. The film then takes that discomfort to the next level by having that unwanted friend become a dangerous stalker. It's so uncomfortable that it's kind of admirable.
The problem with this build up is that it takes way too long. The first half of the film is sluggish, mostly comprised of scenes of Greta being creepy and Frances being scared. Nothing really happens to advance the plot. However, it does help to establish Greta as a terrifying and efficient shadow in Frances' life. I'm torn, therefore, whether to consider this laborious build-up a positive or a negative.
What I can say is that when the film finally gets going it holds your attention effectively. The second half of the movie transforms into a horrifying cover of "Don't Breathe" by way of "Bates Motel." It's an absolutely intense delight and makes me wonder why they didn't start with this as the set up of the film.
I continuously have trouble deciding whether or not Chloë Grace Moretz is a good actress or not. She doesn't really slip into the character, but there's nothing particularly wrong I can see with her performance either. Whatever flaws are found in her performance are totally made up for with Isabelle Huppert's portrayal of Greta. She completely slips into the character's skin, giving you the the immediate sense that there's something subtly wrong with her before fully committing to over-the-top villainy for the finale.
The theme of the movie is really messy. There's an attempt to establish an arc for Frances centered around the loss of her mother, but it's not given much attention throughout. And by the second half the film has dropped any attempt at thematic exploration entirely to focus on being a claustrophobic horror/thriller. If the film had only been the claustrophobic horror/thriller the theme would've been adequately negligible, made up for by the visceral thrills the film always intended to deliver. However, since the film did try to take a stab at thematic depth, a part of the experience feels incomplete once you realize, "Wait, they never paid off that whole absentee mother set up did they?"
The film is equally uneven on a technical level as well. The cinematography is fine, but unremarkable. The editing and score are the same, but are a duo act of annoyance in regards to jump cuts. At one point there are two jump cuts in a row accompanied by their own *boom* sounds and it just makes a hilarious bit of "Why did that need to happen exactly?"
"Greta" is... frustrating. You can tell it wants to be a "serious" horror film what with the "deliberate" pacing and sticking to a possible, real-life situation. However, in doing so the filmmakers have taken away from what the film is obviously much better at: uncomfortably claustrophobic suspense. I suppose it ends on a somewhat high note (the last shot is legitimately great), but you still had to sit through a lot of boring stuff to get there.
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