The Dead Girl

Arden (Toni Collette) is a painfully shy and isolated living her cruel bed ridden mother (Piper Laurie). One day she finds a dead girl in her yard. She becomes the talk of the town and is asked out by the creepy bag boy Rudy (Giovanni Ribisi).

Leah (Rose Byrne) is a dutiful fragile daughter. Her parents (Mary Steenburgen, Bruce Davison) is still searching for their missing daughter for 15 years. Leah suffers from the oppressive need to find her sister.

Ruth (Mary Beth Hurt) and Carl (Nick Searcy) are a fighting couple with a storage place. She finds some troubling things in one of the storage lockers.

Melora (Marcia Gay Harden) has come to L.A. looking for her runaway daughter last seen as a 16 year old Krista (Brittany Murphy). She befriends Krista's former roommate Rosetta (Kerry Washington).

Usually a multi-storyline movie like this can be a problem. The common trouble happens when some of the story really disappoints. The good news for this movie is that every story is compelling with great actors. The movie starts with the amazing Toni Collette and never really declines in the class of acting. Director/writer Karen Moncrieff has crafted a very simple story. It's the powerful acting that elevates the movie.

Greetings again from the darkness. Who is Karen Moncrief and where did she come from? The writer/director of this very interesting, complex "little" depressing film really took me by surprise with a tremendous script and creatively photographed look at how 5 stories intersect thanks to one dead body found in a field. I know most are already thinking "Crash" or "Babel", but this film is much more intimate and personal than either of those two big budget films.

The story begins with emotionally bankrupt Toni Collette finding the body in a field near the home she shares with her physically invalid, emotionally abusing mother, played with brimstone by Piper Laurie (who has quite the history of tough love Mom's!). The depths of Collette's loneliness are played out in one of the most painful first kisses ever filmed on her date with Giovanni Ribisi.

On the surface, what appears to be the most "normal" family, we get the lovely Rose Byre preparing the body for burial and believing (or more truthfully hoping) that the body belongs to her long missing sister. The stress and depression in the family is so painful as mother Mary Steenburgen refuses to "give up" hope and dad Bruce Davison is just helpless as the women in his life are all lost to him. While Byrne thinks the body belongs to her sister, she feel re-born and actually leaves her fetal position to date James Franco. However, soon all returns to "normal".

Mary Beth Hurt and Nick Searcy run a storage unit business next to their home and they spend their time together arguing and going emotionally numb. Searcy escapes for long drives and comes home with no explanation. A little detective work by Hurt has her proving her love and loyalty to a man who does not deserve it.

Marcia Gay Harden is the mother of the found dead girl. She goes searching for answers as to why her daughter ran away from home and how the daughter lived. The answers aren't pretty and most come from a hooker played by Kerry Washington. After much heart-break, the only sunshine in the film is discovered.

The films final chapter delivers the last piece of the puzzle as we see Brittany Murphy (the dead girl) and her struggles to make some type of life for herself. Again, painful to watch, but filled with emotional drama.

These stories are broken out here for a message. The acting of each of those named above is profound and never once over the top. Each story could be its own film, yet the brief glimpse provided into each life is just about all we can take. Ms. Moncrief has created a gem and a view into life's pain that crosses all genders, races and socio-economic boundaries. OK, I did smile once ... when I heard that Brittany Murphy's character has the last name KUTCHER!!

Karen Moncrieff's 'The Dead Girl' tells the harrowing tale of five women whose fractured lives are affected by the discovery of a dead girl. There's the fragile and abused Arden (Toni Collette) who discovers the body, the tormented Leah (Rose Byrne) the medical examiner of the body, frustrated Ruth (Mary-Beth Hurt), the wife of the man who murdered the girl, a concerned Melora, mother of the dead girl and the title girl (Brittany Murphy) desperate to get presents to her daughter.

Moncrief is a fine storyteller and she does it with profound depth. She grabs the viewers attention from the very beginning and manages to keep the film under control without sensationalizing the story. Her subtle writing and direction are exceptional. She divides the story into five chapters and she takes the method of non-linear storytelling to a new level. At first she starts off by showing us the perspective of the stranger who is only linked to the girl in the title because she found her mutilated body. Then she shows us the point of view of the medical examiner, followed by the killer's wife, mother and the girl in question. There is a lyrical quality in the way these five sad stories are portrayed. The score is efficiently used.

'The Dead Girl' additionally shines with one of the finest ensembles that delivers poignant performances. Toni Collette, Rose Byrne, Marcia Gay Harden, Piper Laurie, Mary Beth Hurt, Brittany Murphy, Kerry Washington, Mary Steenburgen, James Franco, Josh Brolin and Giovanni Ribisi are astonishing in their portrayal of broken people.

'The Dead Girl' is a frightening, sad, poignant and beautifully crafted little film about shattered lives and their longing for something different. The haunting fade-out in the end lingers in the questioning mind.

THE DEAD GIRL has an ensemble cast that makes each story segment fit into the other and Toni Collette, once again, gives a knock out performance, with Giovanni Ribisi, another stand out in this very dark and dramatic story in which Brittany Murphy shines in a character which once again is reminiscent of the tragic SHERRY BABY and gives the dead girl a feeling of life which she never really had.

The dark colors in the photography and dialog fit each scene and made all the characters stand out. What was really clever was how the writer tied the different segments into finding and identifying the dead girl and how the characters were each in their own way, rather bleak and very dark "Shakespearean" men and women all thrown into this witch's kettle of death and tragedy.

I salute the independent film festival for honoring THE DEAD GIRL in 2007 as this very dark tale might have trouble resonating with a wider audience. But to watch such a talented group of actors in THE DEAD GIRL should be recommended for any future actor.

"The Dead Girl" A film review by Brian Murphy "The Dead Girl," writer/director Karen Moncrieff's (a former television actress and director) penetrating new film, connects five women affected by the death of a young woman (Brittany Murphy). The film, split up into five chapters, reads like a book, with each chapter examining the changes in their lives brought about by the brutal murder of someone most of them have never met.

"The Stranger," "The Sister," "The Wife," "The Mother" and "The Dead Girl" comprise a fascinating, multiple character study of abused, confused and repressed women. The murdered woman winds up being an altruistic, sacrificial lamb that alters the course of others for better and for worse.

Ms. Moncrieff has assembled a stellar cast. Toni Collette ("Little Miss Sunshine") shines as Arden, an emotionally bruised daughter, isolated from society by her abusive, invalid mother. After discovering the corpse of a young woman, her world is turned upside down; the media hounds her, she is romantically pursued by a creepy grocery clerk (the underrated Giovanni Ribisi), and she rebels against her passive nature, lashing out at a mother (Piper Laurie) who, referring to her deceased brother, remarks, "He (God) should have taken you instead!" Rose Byrne is phenomenal as Leah, a young woman desperately searching for a way to put the 15-year disappearance of her sister to rest. While her mother (Mary Steenburgen) still posts age-enhanced pictures of her daughter, desperately hoping for her return, Leah wishes for her family to accept the fact that her sister must be dead, in order for them all to move on. Her occupation as a coroner perfectly corresponds to her character. When she comes across the corpse that Arden discovered, she immediately finds a birthmark similar to that of her sister. Finally feeling the closure she has been seeking, Leah embarks on a life separate from work and her therapist's office. She responds to the advances of slightly creepy coworker Derek (James Franco of "Spiderman"), and has sex in a scene Ms. Moncrieff deftly designed to express release.

Mary Beth Hurt (as Ruth,) and Marcia Gay Harden ("Pollock,") present two antithetical characters seeking redemption for, perhaps, their denial. Ruth, a religious, forgotten wife, believes her despondent husband may be a serial killer, while Harden's Melora is the mother of a woman possibly murdered by Ruth's husband. Ultimately, their choices define them. Ruth chooses to remain in denial, while Melora seeks the cause of her daughter's decision to run away. In the end, one is lost and haunted, while the other earns redemption.

Not to be forgotten, Brittany Murphy ("8 Mile"), as Krista (a.k.a. "The Dead Girl") gives a spectacular performance that serves as the essential footnote to Moncrieff's film. Murphy delivers as a junkie prostitute who, despite her troubled past, is still a loving mother.

Karen Moncrieff's script may have difficulty appealing to a mass male audience. Her script is gender-centric, studying the growth or regression of several female leads. The few male characters involved are either initially or ultimately presented as unsympathetic, withdrawn, or potential sources of violence. This does not exclude children, like the young boy who punches his sister in the arm. Men are not definitively portrayed as evil, but the film does cast a wary glare in their direction.

However, Ms. Moncrieff's writing is insightful, and her direction is expressive. She uses a myriad of close-ups to showcase the talents of her fine ensemble cast and also to express a claustrophobic tone-Her women are often emotionally stunted, cornered by men, or voluntarily succumb to their own fears. Their transitions define this empathetic yet brutally honest film.