Film Review: Neil Jordan's Greta

Directed by Neil Jordan. Starring Isabelle Huppert, Chloe Grace Moretz, Maika Monroe, Stephen Rea. 98 mins. In cinemas today.

Horror has long examined the relationship between mother and child. The Babadook, Hereditary and The Hole In The Ground are but three recent examples.

It’s interesting, then, that this dynamic hasn’t yet been explored in thrillers. However, Neil Jordan is a past master at subverting genre expectations – which is what Greta is all about. Chloe Grace Moretz plays Frances, a young woman struggling to cope with the death of her mother. She meets Greta (Isabelle Huppert), a sophisticated French woman who misses her Paris-based daughter, and the two become united in their loneliness. But Greta soon becomes obsessive and starts stalking Frances.

The surrogate mother/daughter dynamic adds an interesting twist to the Single White Female/Fatal Attraction framework, but that’s not the only twist Jordan brings to the story. While Greta’s reign of terror is initially subtle, Jordan amps up the camp factor to 11, not just asking the audience to suspend disbelief, but to abandon it entirely. As every character makes decisions that seem completely inexplicable, so many plot holes appear in the film that it is hard to fathom.

Isabelle Huppert, meanwhile, gleefully transforms into a cartoonishly unhinged villain, with the manic energy of a modern day Wicked Witch. She can apparently walk through walls to appear wherever Frances is; turn invisible while stalking her prey; and is apparently physically invincible. Her theatrical turn is highlighted by ominous camera angles and a dramatic score. Moretz’s muted performance and the initially subtle psychological elements are at odds with the second act’s absurdity. Greta may be uneven, but like any Neil Jordan film, it is worth seeing.