Greta (2018)

Directed by: Neil Jordan | 98 minutes | drama, thriller | Actors: Isabelle Huppert, Chloë Grace Moretz, Maika Monroe, Jane Perry, Jeff Hiller, Parker Sawyers, Brandon Lee Sears, Jessica Preddy, Thaddeus Daniel, Raven Dauda, ​​Colm Feore

The bag looks too perfect to just leave behind in a New York subway. But the young waitress Frances (Chloë Grace Moretz) doesn’t give a damn. She decides to deliver the bag in person, despite warnings from her friend (‘In New York you don’t take an abandoned bag with you, but call the explosives disposal service’).

At first glance, the owner seems like a sweet, middle-aged French woman, wandering in her own lonely world. The two develop a strong bond remarkably quickly, partly because Frances needs a mother figure. But as this Greta (Isabelle Huppert) becomes increasingly obsessive about her life, Frances slowly begins to peel back the shells of Greta’s ingeniously constructed make-believe world.

‘Greta’ thus unfolds as a fairly classic stalker thriller and rarely manages to rise above the worn-out genre clichés. Incomprehensible decisions by the characters, passive supporting roles, a series of coincidences that are just a bit too forced: it seems as if director Neil Jordan (‘The Crying Game’) and the writers hardly dare to deviate from the beaten track.

‘Greta’ is therefore especially worthwhile because of the lead actresses. As always, Moretz is solid as the (slightly too) naive twenty-something who steps into Greta’s pitfalls with open eyes. But it’s Isabelle Huppert who makes every minute spent on this film worth it. As the manipulative and devious Greta, Huppert is given every opportunity to explore the psychological boundaries of her character: the French grand mistress is clearly having a good time as a troubled psychopath.

But what really sticks is the disappointment that ‘Greta’ never breaks the laws of a B-thriller in terms of content. Where the potential was omnipresent for a psychological horror study, ‘Greta’ mainly gets stuck in easy plot twists and poor character development. Also with the apparently interesting mother-daughter complex, director Jordan hardly does anything, so that ‘Greta’ in the core remains pitifully superficial.

The fact that ‘Greta’ is worth the attention is mainly due to the famous Huppert, dancing to the tones of her own insanity. In all her madness, she has a distant resemblance to Jack Nicholson’s main character in ‘The Shining’. With an actress who looks so vicious about it, you therefore forgive ‘Greta’ even the thirteen-in-a-dozen script.