The greatest thriller of all time? I think so.

Rating: 10/10 (7 June 2009)

I don't think a movie has really been so effective in shocking the hell out of the audience. So let's be frank: movies like "The Silence of the Lambs" don't usually win very big awards, let alone Oscars (in all five of the major categories, no less, making it only the third film in history to do so).
With gruesome scenes of murder, autopsies and cannibalism, it's hard to imagine "The Silence of the Lambs" winning Best Picture at the Oscars, not to mention heaps of praise and topping numerous "best" lists since its release. "The Silence of the Lambs" has also become a bona-fide cinematic and pop culture icon, introducing two of the most memorable characters in cinema history.
The film, an adaptation of the novel by Thomas Harris, concerns the FBI's hunt for a particularly brutal serial killer, "Buffalo Bill" (the creepy Ted Levine), who skins his victims, mostly plus-sized women, for reasons that are too gruesome to be repeated here. The FBI puts a young trainee on the case, Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster), and they have her, in turn, interview the deadly Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), a cunning psychopath who remains under tight lock and key at a hospital for the criminally insane. Lecter offers to help Clarice in developing a psychological profile in order to help capture "Buffalo Bill," in exchange for her confiding in him, some of her darkest and most troubling childhood memories.
"The Silence of the Lambs" is not a film for the squeamish; I already mentioned why. But even for its scenes of grisly carnage, it's not a horror film, nor an exploitation picture that revels in scenes of outlandish gore. Instead, the real terror is more psychological: we rely on the reactions of the characters for the effect. It's a technique that director Jonathan Demme found to be quite satisfactory (it was also put to effective use in the equally disturbing, and commanding serial killer thriller, "Seven," four years later in 1995). Another technique that Demme put to great work here was having his actors stare directly into the camera, allowing us to become uncomfortably intimate with the on-screen action.
I'm not really a fan of Jodie Foster or Anthony Hopkins, really, but their work here is nothing short of legendary. Foster is stunning as the young FBI trainee Clarice Starling, an attractive but commanding young woman who, it seems, is an adult child still reeling it in from some deeply-seeded childhood traumas, and it is through her work on the "Buffalo Bill" case and her meetings with Hannibal Lecter that she seems to be able to get a chance to deal with her troubled past and get some closure. Hopkins is equally commanding as the manipulative "Hannibal the Cannibal," who is able to probe the mind of his young interviewee with disturbing efficiency and ease, to satisfy his own twisted curiosities that I don't think are ever really explained (that's a good thing - it makes him even scarier). These truly are, two of the most phenomenal performances in a movie that is a phenomenon upon itself.
"The Silence of the Lambs" is purely the greatest and most terrifying thriller I've seen. However, my personal favorite thriller of all time remains "Seven." But the contributions that "The Silence of the Lambs" made to the thriller genre, and motion picture history, are not to be overlooked. If it weren't for this film, I don't think I would've gotten "Seven" all those years ago.
"The Silence of the Lambs" was recently named the greatest thriller of all time in Britain.
I'll be hard-pressed to find a reason to disagree with that assertion.
10/10