Ultimately silly

Rating: 7/10 (31 January 2019)

This film is a perfectly pleasant way to spend an raining afternoon. The film is engaging and fills the viewer with the requisite dread. Hannibal is a great monster. He conforms perfectly to the antihero archetype as he typifies the best qualities of humanity gone disastrously wrong. Hopkins chews scenery with the best of them. Clarice, especially in Foster's hands, is a strong character with buried psychological trauma that is fighting to get out. The interplay the two characters stands apart from the rest of the film.
Part of the reason for that is the rest of it so much worse than the leads. Of note, Buffalo Bill's villainy is steeped in lazy cultural tropes. The screenplay bothering to distinguish between Bill and a "real" transsexual does not make it any less lazy to othering a male villain by feminizing him. The bread crumbs of the mystery are likewise rote and basic. A moth is used as a symbol of transformation! Riveting! LAMBS!
This is genre film that has been treated way too seriously. This is something of a bad joke.