Greta ** (2018, Isabelle Huppert, Chloë Grace Moretz, Maika Monroe) – Movie Review

Chloë Grace Moretz stars as nice, earnest young Frances McCullen, who finds a handbag on the New York subway and returns it to its owner, lonely widow Greta Hideg (Isabelle Huppert), who, it is soon revealed, is a nutter with a deadly agenda. ‘I saw the bags, Greta, I never want to see you again.’

Co-writer/ director Neil Jordan’s 2018 mystery thriller Greta has a great set-up in the story by Ray Wright (who also co-writes the screenplay), but the second act is not as good, as the plot struggles to be credible and avoid the movie cliches as it tries to keep up its suspense momentum. However, it is the third act that is the real let-down. At this point it hardly needs to be credible, just entertaining. So it needs to go into over-drive, like Fatal Attraction or Misery, but instead, with a last-minute twist you can see coming a mile off (and somehow the otherwise astute Greta herself can’t), it somehow just fizzles out with a whimper rather than a bang.

This is a shame, what with the eerie premise and strong performances of Moretz and Huppert, who are both full-on up for it, and Maika Monroe who is good as Frances’s flat-mate friend Erica Penn. Greta could have been a contender. Moretz and Huppert are well cast and ideal for it, showing their class as actors, even in this pulpy kind of thing.

There is a classier movie trying to get out of here. It’s been a while since the last Neil Jordan film – Byzantium in 2012 – and he seems a bit out of practice. The old Neil Jordan would have made a better job of Greta, though it is still entirely creditable and entertaining enough.

Greta premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on 6 September 2018, with its US release on 1 March 2019 and UK release on 18 April 2019.

It is filmed in Dublin, Ireland and Toronto, Canada, with much atmospheric location New York City shooting to make it look genuinely American.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Movie Review

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