Movie Breakdown: Greta

Pre-Screening Stance:

Isablle Huppert as a lonely lady with attachment issues?  I’m in on that.  Admittedly though, I’m a little less in on Chloe Grace Moretz (she’s so very hit or miss) and director Neil Jordan (the only other film of his I’ve seen is the just-OK Ondine).

Post-Screening Ramble:

For most of Greta, I was holding a strong side-eye as it sure seemed like a horror film that didn’t have any balls.  Frances (Chloe Grace Moretz) finds a bag on the subway and then goes about returning it to its owner, Greta (Isablle Huppert).  She doesn’t have any intention of befriending the woman, but they hit it off and start having a lot of sad, cutesy moments together.  Obviously, the sequence here is meant to make you care when their fall out swings around, which is fine, but it plays out so slow and basic that it’s borderline boring.  Eventually, Frances gets clued into Greta’s unstable ways, but even the stalking that takes place after their breakup is fairly vanilla.  Oh look, Greta is outside a window or in a hallway!  Oh my, she’s taking pictures from a hidden location!  Fortunately, there comes a moment in this film where things between Frances and Greta legit go sideways, and it’s then that director Neil Jordan turns up all the dials and allows his film to become a campy good time.  I won’t spoil anything, but I will note that the third act is worth slogging through the first two for.

Greta takes a while (too long of a while) to get going, but once it does it will get you to lock your eyes onto the screen.  Catch a matinee or wait until it hits the small screen.

One Last Thought:

If you’ve long been paranoid of doing a good deed for a stranger because you’re afraid of it going horribly wrong, don’t expect this movie to help with that at all.