With amazing physical and mental agility, Mr. Hopkins brings an unearthly elegance to the twisted Hannibal. It is wonderfully indescribable watching this marvelous actor play with words and toy with people while his nimble mind prepares his next strike. He makes this monster an astonishingly plausible figment of our imaginations. Therein lies the problem. The Silence of the Lambs dealt less with graphic cannibalism than with what it prompted the imagination to conjure.
Mystery generates suspense.
In the ten years that have passed since the making of the earlier film, visual assaults have become commonplace, mystery has vanished. Suggest something to me, let my imagination run. I don't want to watch movies with my eyes shut. I don't think so.