Two Thumbs Up For This One

Rating: 9/10 (22 February 2011)

Jodie Foster stars as FBI Agent Clarice Starling who's on a mission to track down a homicidal maniac, but only the sneering cannibal Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) is the only person who knows his whereabouts. But his presence is luring and quite intimidating so getting into his head shouldn't be an option. With supreme intelligence like Stephen Hawking and diet that will put Jeffrey Dahmer to shame, Lecter has the delight in manipulating his victims through his diabolical mind games.
Kindly, Lecter obliges to Clarice in helping with her investigation if she joins him in his little web of mind games. but the catch is she must reveal her personal background about her and he'll do the same. The horror genre in the movie isn't some dark, scary macabre individual going on a joyful killing spree, but a chilling, manipulative supremely intellectual individual who's desires is to play games with the medulla oblongata. He's got the gift of smelling one's fears and knows exactly where to strike at you, psychologically. There's even a good chance that the psychopath Agent Starling is after might even be twice as crazy as Lecter. But Lecter's motives are so convincing and executed to perfection by Sir Anthony Hopkins that the room temperature in the theater got a bit colder than usual.
With the instincts of a snake, Lecter starts then starts to slurp. Hopkins later reveals it was improvised just to add more intimidation to the character. This role as Dr. Lecter brought this relatively unknown British actor exceptional fame and Hollywood started to take more notice from this middle-aged performer. Lecter himself has identical similarities to Boris Karloff's 1934 movie "The Black Cat" in which Karloff plays a demonic Satanist. Instead of making Lecter an evil, ghoulish monster who goes on a killing spree, he takes the Norman Bates route and plays a monster in the form of a sophisticated gentleman. Sure he gladly helps Clarice, but at cost of haunting her as well. Sure he's not as bad as we are lead to believe, but you can't help taking your eyes off the screen when he comes on.
What was fortuitous about the release of "The Silence of the Lambs" was released at the time cold-blooded cannibal/serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer was making the headlines. Both stories were quite identical to one another as they both lured their audience with gripping and chilling effects. Therefore, it is safe to say that "Silence of the Lambs" gets us into sorting out connections to find a convincing explanation as to what drove Dahmer to be the way that he is. Unlike other psychological thrillers, this one will have you pondering to yourself over what kind of connection this movie has to the Dahmer story. The real shortcoming here is that audience at the time wanted more, as in more Hannibal. Well it took 10 years in the making and in 2001 "Hannibal" was released. And even though Dahmer is rotting in hell, Hannibal will live on into ours minds forever.