Pure Thrills

Rating: 10/10 (17 January 2013)

One of the iconic characters in horror is brought to us in this terrifying thriller and brought Sir Anthony Hopkins the 1991 Best Actor Oscar. Jodie Foster (who also won an Oscar) stars as naive FBI agent Clarice Starling on her first big assignment to capture the psychopathic serial murderer known as Buffalo Bill. To assist her in the case, Starling is sent to see the infamous cannibalistic psychiatrist, Hannibal Lecter (Hopkins in a chilling performance), but she is warned that Lecter is adept at playing mind games with others and she mustn't tell him personal details. As Clarice comes closer and closer to the killer's true identity, she is thrust into a deadly game of cat and mouse with both Buffalo Bill and the sly Dr. Lecter.
What truly sets this film apart from other horror/thrillers is the performance of Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter, a man who is clearly homicidal but not in an over-the-top fashion. Lecter is presented as calm, cool, collected but still frightening in the sense of the fact we know he is dangerous and has killed people, yet we are drawn to him like Clarice and we are fascinated by his intelligence. This is a clever device to present us as the viewers with a killer who terrifies us mentally rather than being a raving maniac like Freddy or Jason.