Put the lotion in the basket!!!!!!!

Rating: 10/10 (13 September 2010)

Silence of the Lambs is probably the best movie of its kind. Its sheer intensity is unmatched. It is a superbly well-written story that involves multiple very dangerous characters, most notorious of which is Dr. Lecter (Hannibal). An FBI agent, Clarice Starling (wonderfully portrayed by Jodie Foster) needs to extract information from a dangerous psychopath Hannibal Lecter (amazingly brought to life by Anthony Hopkins) about a serial killer called Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine).
There are so many elements that make Silence Of The Lambs chillingly scary. Buffalo Bill chooses young female victims and skins them. He kidnaps the daughter of a senator which quickly prompts an FBI hunt. Agent Clarice visits Dr. Lecter who is held in a maximum security prison to ask him questions about Buffalo Bill's psychological profile because he was Dr. Lecter's patient many years ago....when Dr. Lecter was a normal human being (if you can call it that).
I have always found the idea of a psychologist going insane and becoming a human eating monster very scary. I mean he is supposed to be the expert about human behavior to cure psychological disturbances and he is the most disturbed of all. However, he is equally brilliant. Dr. Lecter's brilliant mind brings depth to his character. Clarice's difficult task of understanding and deciphering the mind of -not one but- two psychopaths creates multi-dimensions.
I don't want to say too much about the story and what happens next. But let me say that the movie is full of suspense and literally breath-taking moments. After 20 years, I have not seen any other similar type of movie that I enjoyed as much as I enjoyed Silence of the Lambs. This movie completely changes the serial killer characters in movies and adds depth to them in an unprecedented fashion. Killers in movies like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th, Halloween (the major horror franchises) gave us faceless monsters with no character depth. They wouldn't say a word or even make a sound (this was probably done to disassociate them from regular human beings). Even though this seemed to have worked, Silence of the Lambs' depiction of killer monsters in more elaborate fashion works even better.