Greta Review: One Killer, All Filler
Photo by Jonathan Hession - © Widow Movie, LLC and Showbox
Finding originality in film is hard. Especially when it comes to horror - one of the oldest genres in the medium.
It’s how we even have genres at all. A film is made, then other similar films are made, and before you know it, you have an entire category of films - all with similar beats, tropes, character types, and plot points.
Greta, in that regard, checks all the boxes commonly found within the horror genre. It doesn’t break any new ground, but rather stands firmly on that ground - to its detriment.
Clocking in at just under 100 minutes, Greta benefits from a sleek runtime and quality cinematography filled with contrasting cool and warm tones and hipster vibes that make the film pretty to look at. It also features a strong performance from its lead (Chloë Grace Moretz) and a solid, though sometimes campy performance by the film’s title character played by Isabelle Huppert.
The film’s plot, however, doesn’t add anything new to the genre, and instead relies on exhausted tropes to deliver its story.
Even Greta’s personality down to its smallest detail consists of traits we’ve seen before. A psychotic killer who ironically enjoys indulging in cultural sophistication through the likes of fine wines and classical music? Nothing new. It would’ve been more jarring and disturbing if Greta listened to Post Malone and 21 Savage as opposed to Chopin. At least it would’ve been fresh.
That’s not to say there aren’t moments in this film that are genuinely effective; there are. But ironically, it’s the moments before the rise in action that are most unsettling. A feeling of powerlessness that’s a common fixture in horror films is presented in a modern and very relatable way. The social media stalking. The bureaucratic, seemingly uninterested response to, and subsequent inaction from, police in the face of a growing threat. Those are things people can (sadly) identify with. Those moments appear early on in the film, and they do a good job of holding your attention. But the scarier the film tries to get, the less scary it becomes.
Horror often asks its audience to suspend belief, and its audience typically knows that going in; but when this film seems like it’s trying to ground itself in realism, it made those requests for suspension distracting. It wasn’t the overall premise of the film that was the problem, but rather the actions of characters big and small that made little to no sense at times, and took me out of the film as a result.
There were a handful of opportunities for this film to zig when the audience was expecting a zag, but it had no interest in doing so. Ultimately, it settles into a formulaic groove with a “surprise” twist towards the end that shouldn’t actually surprise anyone.
It’s that lukewarm sense of familiarity that plagues Greta. You’ve seen this before. We’ve all seen this before.
The film ends in a way that hints at a possible sequel - here’s hoping if that’s the case, the next installment will boast a little more originality.
It’s not that this film is unwatchable, it’s that the film doesn’t have to be watched.
You’ve already seen it.