Silent enough for ya?

Rating: Null/10 (20 February 2002)

You'd think, from all the hype, that this movie is more than "just" a thriller, but no. That's fine with me, but it's still sort of a disappointment. The many people who say this movie has depth are cutting it way too much slack - it has about as much psychological/dramatic content as your typical Stephen King invention, though at least King is more up-front about admitting that psychology is just the mechanism that drives the scares. Here, at times, you get the sense that they think they're actually getting at something more substantial. The title, for example... If this movie were more honest with itself, it would have been called "The Dressmaker From Hell!" or somesuch.
And the famously classy acting, writing and directing? Whatever. I'd have enjoyed it a lot more if nobody told me it was really amazing - it seemed like people just doing their jobs well, making a scary movie. There are little spots where the acting, the writing, and the directing each get downright clumsy; wouldn't normally be an issue except that this movie's bloated reputation makes it an issue. I'd much rather not have been watching this movie at a level where I cared about those things...
I'm not saying that a psychologically intriguing horror movie isn't possible - when, near the beginning of the movie, Clarice more or less dares Hannibal to analyze himself, I thought, "ooh, that'll be fascinating, when he eventually does that." But that was, of course, a stunt this movie didn't have the focus to pull off, so the issue was just dropped, which I saw as implicit acknowledgement that the character is a psychological impossibility and that the movie's pretentions of depth were just that, pretentions, for atmosphere's sake.
And hey, that's not such a bad thing - there were some good scary ideas in the movie - the night-vision bit at the end was really nice, I thought - and there's no shame at all in making a scary movie with some pseudo-psychological atmosphere. But I hold this movie responsible for the new sub-genre of "sordid serial killer gothic" which tends toward the tasteless and pointless by suggesting that the outlandish psychoses of made-up serial killers are in themselves worthy subject matter. Like "Seven," or that one with Jennifer Lopez in a box. And others. You know what I'm talking about.
These people need to reread their Edgar Allan Poe and understand how psychology can actually relate to horror. Or just settle for making gross-out movies and being honest about it.