Thriller Greta disappoints

Review

Greta (R13, 98 mins) Directed by Neil Jordan Reviewed by James Croot ★★1⁄2

Frances McCullen (Chloe Grace Moretz) was just trying to be a good samaritan. Spying an expensive handbag abandoned on the New York subway, she was determined to reunite it with its owner. Roommate Erica (Maika Monroe) wasn’t sure that was such a great idea.

‘‘In Manhattan, if you find a bag, you call the bomb squad,’’ she chides her newly arrived-from-Boston college friend.

Frances though won’t be swayed and eventually tracks down Greta Hideg (Isabelle Huppert).

A mature Frenchwoman, Greta is so delighted by Frances’ ‘‘kind act’’ that she invites her to stay and have a cup of tea. The two instantly bond and it isn’t long before the pair are regularly catching up for dinner, rescuing a pound pooch ‘‘from becoming a euphemism’’ and Frances is opening up about the loss of her mother.

But while the pair are together at Greta’s one night, Frances discovers something troubling – a series of identical handbags, each with a name and cellphone number (including her own) attached.

Supported by Erica, Frances decides to pull back from seeing Greta too much. However, that’s when the bombardment of texts start, followed by visitations to waitress Frances’ workplace.

‘‘The crazier they are, the harder they cling,’’ Erica warns, but with the cops unable to intervene and a restraining order likely to take months, Frances begins to wonder just how she’ll be able to get Greta out of her life.

Irish director Neil Jordan’s first feature since 2012’s Byzantium is another of his artfully shot looks at obsession. Like In Dreams, The Crying Game and The Company of Wolves, some of Greta’s imagery and key moments are likely to haunt you well after viewing.

Jordan does a terrific job of playing with focus to disorientate the viewer and delivers some fabulous set-piece sets of snippets of classical scores, such as Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons.

And yet, there’s something deeply disappointing about the movie. Huppert (Elle) and Moretz (Suspiria) are well-cast, but their characters just feel a little too onedimensional to really compel.

Likewise, Jordan and Ray Wright’s (Case 39) narrative seems like a throwback to the dimea-dozen thrillers that dominated the multiplexes back in the 1990s.

Blend elements of The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, Single White Female and Misery and the result will pretty much give you the tenor of what’s going on here.

It doesn’t help that things take a surreal turn towards the end, stripping the tale of whatever credibility it might have been building up.