GRETA (2019) **

There’s been a lot of talk about “elevated horror” lately.  Greta is an example of an “elevated thriller”.  It features a good cast (Chloe Grace Moretz and Isabelle Huppert) being guided by a prestige director (The Crying Game’s Neil Jordan) through a thoroughly predictable plot, but since it’s got a good cast and a prestige director, we’re supposed to think it’s hot shit.  In this case, Jordan is barely able to disguise the fact it’s nothing more than a weak rehashing of the ‘90s “From Hell” genre.   Despite the fact that Jordan has directed some well-regarded films in the past, there’s little here to distinguish this one from the likes of The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, Single White Female, and The Temp.  (Or the dozens of similarly themed thrillers that Lifetime has been cranking out for the past decade, for that matter.) 

A Good Samaritan named Frances (Moretz) finds a purse on the subway.  Instead of keeping the money inside, she returns it to its owner, Greta (Huppert), an older lonely woman.  Frances feels sorry for her since she herself recently lost her mother and needs an older woman’s guidance.  She finds out much too late that Greta’s an obsessive psycho.

There are one or two moments here that prevent Greta from being completely dismissible.  The turn that sets up the second act is well executed by Jordan.  He also delivers a fine sequence that unfortunately, and infuriatingly, turns out to be one of those “It was all a dream” scenes.  In fact, it turns out to be an “It was all a dream within a dream” scenes, which makes it twice as infuriating.

However, the other notes are struck with rote indifference.  The scenes of Moretz going to the police about Huppert’s behavior, while necessary, stops the film dead in its tracks, mostly because we know the cops won’t do anything about her.  (If they did, the movie would be over.)  Jordan also drops the ball in the third act as the tension pretty much dissipates by the hour mark.  If Jordan leaned into the more horrific elements of the screenplay, it might’ve worked.  As it is, he’s too busy trying to make the flick respectable that he forgets to have any fun with it.

The performances can’t be faulted.  Moretz is good as kind, but gullible heroine, and Maika (It Follows) Monroe breathes a little life into the film as her spunky roommate.  Huppert’s performance is pretty much the whole show though as she chews the scenery with aplomb.  While it’s not a patch on her mesmerizing turn in Elle, her efforts alone make Greta watchable.