The Motherly Psycho-Stalker

The latest release from Irish Director and Screenwriter Neil Jordan, who rose to fame with his 1992 shocker ‘The Crying Game,’ is ‘Greta,’ the story of how a “mother-daughter” friendship between a young woman and a middle-aged one turned into a living nightmare for the former as she realizes to her horror how obsessive and b@t$h!t crazy the latter is, and to what length she will go to maintain their “friendship.”  To be honest, I went into this movie thinking that I’ve seen so many films of its type that nothing in it should surprise me and, while it didn’t really disappoint as far as that goes, I came away satisfied and thinking that the psycho-stalker suspense thriller genre hasn’t quite run its course provided that it’s done right.

 

“Hit-Girl” (whom I shall forever remember her as) Chloë Grace Moretz plays Frances, the unfortunate woman who drew the affections of the titular Greta (French actress Isabelle Huppert), a Hungarian ex-nurse who – if you’ve seen the trailer – left her purse on a train in the New York subway.  In an act of “Good Samaritan” kindness, Frances sought out the woman to return her purse, and instantly struck up a friendship with the lonely woman, who seemed so nice at first and a kindred soul.  Alas, the genre “formula” must assert itself in due course and things unravel in classic psycho-stalker movie fashion, escalating to its inevitable climax (albeit with an interesting twist in this one I must admit).

 

Needless to say, I’m a sucker for psycho-stalker suspense thrillers, having seen my fair share over the decades in films such as ‘Misery,’ ‘Cape Fear,’ ‘Single White Female,’ ‘Pacific Heights,’ ‘The Fan,’ ‘The Crush,’ ‘Disturbia’ and, well, you get the idea.  While ‘Greta’ doesn’t really offer anything earth-shatteringly new, it delivered the tension and suspense in large part thanks to the performances of Huppert and Moretz.  And this is all that matters in the final analysis, isn’t it?

Grade: B