Shaken, shocked and scared.
I finally got round to seeing The Silence of the Lambs the other day. Having heard so much about it, mostly in terms of “couldn’t sleep for weeks after seeing it”, “scariest film ever”, and similar reviews, I was prepared to be shaken, shocked and scared. So was I?
Well, in short: no. The film did not work for me, I’m afraid. I’m not saying I think it’s a bad film. On the contrary. Jodie Foster was amazing, Anthony Hopkins was amazing. But there were too many parts of the film I didn’t care much for. The whole ‘other serial killer’ story was maybe necessary but rather graphic (was that really necessary other than to simply shock?), the whole FBI doing their work bit was nothing out of the ordinary. Even Anthony Hopkins going all cannibalistic seemed so out of character and – though clever – not awe-inspiring.
What I did enjoy tremendously was the psychological thriller part of it. The meetings between Foster and Hopkins were magical. If that had been the main thrust of the film and if they had downsized the ordinary ‘how-catch-em’ part of it, it would have been a 10 out of 10 for me. There was an amazing tension in those meetings, they both played it so well, I could easily have watched that for hours on end. As it was, it lost some of its tension because of all the other noise going on.
Last line in the film was hilarious though. I’ll give ‘em that. No, I won’t spoil it by saying what it was. Just watch the film (again?) and see what I mean.
🙂
Adrian