"The Silence of the Lambs" is, as you've heard, intensely frightening and off-putting, but more significantly in today's cinema, it's storytelling at its finest

Rating: 10/10 (22 August 2009)

There is a fine line of similarity between Jonathan Demme's "The Silence of the Lambs" and Alfred Hitchcock's iconic thriller "Psycho." They were both notorious upon initial release for their surprising amount of violent and off-putting content that ultimately proved too much for some people and they are both incredible, visionary masterpieces. Demme's film, based on a very good book by Thomas Harris, is not only one of the creepiest films I've ever seen, but it's one of the two or three best horror films I've ever seen. It's frightening, it's unforgettably creepy, it's off-putting, but it's also well-acted, works around a terrific story and premise, and is overall, a great movie.
Purist fans of the original book by Harris will not be disappointed, for Demme's film follows the novel almost religiously step by step and sometimes quote for quote. Jodie Foster won her second Academy Award for her portrayal of an FBI trainee after a serial killer nicknamed Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine) who skins his victims, and uses the psychological genius of a cannibalistic serial killer behind bars, Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) to track him down before his latest victim's skinless body winds up in another river.
Let me state off the bat that personally, I am not a fan of the horror genre and knowing that Gene Siskel himself was quite appalled by the film, I was a little cautious going into "The Silence of the Lambs." But I am so glad I did. I was freaked out, I was on the edge of my seat half the time, and there are some images in the film that I really don't care for, but underneath all of the frightening subtext, there was a true, beautiful masterpiece and a terrific story to keep me interested.
Unlike a truly awful horror film I recently saw, "Mirrors" (2008), "The Silence of the Lambs" is not all blood-and-guts and no story. In fact, there's only five or six really creepy and gruesome moments in the movie and they are wisely spaced apart from each other so that the filmmakers and actors can work on developing the plot and the mystery, which is far more engaging. It's not just one brutal killing after another, which really gets tiresome. It's an engaging example of storytelling, but for those who love scary movies, you will not be disappointed, either.
Apart from having a well-written story, "The Silence of the Lambs" has terrific characters and a great cast to boast about as well. The best performance in the film is Jodie Foster's, who is hands-down sympathetic and brilliant as the struggling FBI agent whose on this mission not to prove herself to her boss (Scott Glenn), but to save a young woman's life from the hands of a sick-minded monster. One of the few problems I had with the book was that I didn't like the Clarice Starling character; she seemed too vulgar and dislikable to me and more self-centered. I liked Foster's interpretation more because she generates the sympathy and remorse that an audience goes after. Quit the contrast to Anthony Hopkins's character.
Although he is a versatile actor capable of doing a great many other movies, this is the film that Anthony Hopkins is most remembered as and that's simply because next to or even above Norman Bates by Anthony Perkins, he's the most disturbing villain ever put on screen. Hopkins's entire performance is a brilliant visualization of what Thomas Harris dreamed up while writing the original books after hour upon hour of studying real-life serial killers and psychopaths. Hopkins speaks of a voice that's only uncannily familiar to his natural tone, he seldom blinks, he oftentimes stands perfectly still, and works with these well-written lines conceived by Harris and adapted by the screenwriter to present a disgusting, horrific monster of a man who does not serve as a role model and something that the audience fears and turns away from. We do not even see Hopkins for a good chunk of the way in and we spend the first part of the movie anticipating his arrival, preparing for this man who killed and then ate people for reasons nobody can really understand. A great strength of "The Silence of the Lambs" is that it does not make likable characters out of serial killers. Hannibal Lecter and Buffalo Bill, by contrast, are sick, conniving, and savage whom you do not want to come within a mile of.
But again, the movie is not ABOUT the fact that Hannibal Lecter eats people and Buffalo Bill skins people and it does not lead up to these moments. It's not ABOUT the notoriously shocking thrills. Many horror films today are—they follow it almost as if it were a formula. But "The Silence of the Lambs" is an exception. The thrills are used as they should be—as a service to the story that's being told. They strengthen it, rather than consume it.