Product: The Dead Girl (2006)
Rating: 4.0
Great acting but slightly flawed
It's weird to figure out where this film hooked me in to watch it. Normally I like more independent films but sometimes there just so awful and "boy-are-we-smart" attitudes that you feel like the more you roll your eyes, the more they'll pop out of your sockets. "The Dead Girl" is one of those kind of films where it really shouldn't work and yet everything fits right but not quite enough. There's nothing inherently wrong with the story but it's like performing a long piano piece and hit 2 bad notes, it's like "argh, so close!"The movie opens with Arden (Toni Collette) discovering the body of a young girl, Krista (Brittany Murphy) dead in a field. Krista's mother (Marcia Gay Harden) is in town trying to find her as well as finding out some surprising news. A body believed to be Krista's is found by a morgue assistant (Rose Byrne) who's been looking for her sister for years. Krista's killer is slowly being found out by his wife (Mary Beth Hurt).There's different segments to the film and they're all played one at a time so it doesn't suffer that Crash format of having everyone somehow passing by each other. While the characters are all connected, it's not presented in this sort of implausible fashion that really only Robert Altman films can pull off. However, that means that each segment relies on the strength of where it is in the running order and how well done it is. For example, the "Sister" segment centering on Byrne is definately my favorite yet the previous segment, "the Stranger" which focuses on Collette is kind of boring.The acting though is by-and-large excellent. There's some that are surprising (I always found Rose Byrne underrated yet nobody listens to me) while some are just obvious standouts such as Toni Collette but she's always good. Strangely, the one weak link is the titular character played by Brittany Murphy. Of course, the whole idea of a drugged out/messed up girl doesn't seem like a stretch but sometimes she's almost all over the place, being quietly reflective and subtle than she turns on the hysterics and kind of goes overboard. Sure she avoids the Sean Penn style of overacting but it's kind of distracting. The other I felt was James Franco as the lab assistant who gets involved with Byrne. He didn't feel like someone she should find comfort in since he almost seems more like someone who'd rather keep her in his bed than be a friend.It's probably not a film for everyone. While the indie crowd would love it, it's one of those out of the way films where you'd almost have to overexplain what the whole thing's about. It's best a film you discover on your own or word of mouth and whether it interests you than some guy saying it's "best movie of the year!".