ChikPapa Very disappointed :(

Boobirt Stylish but barely mediocre overall

SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Limerculer A waste of 90 minutes of my life

msmoogoo I enjoyed this movie and the fact that it is split into chapters and all the characters tie together. Each chapter you learn a little more about them and it doesn't all make sense until the final and you get one of those "aha" moments and I liked that. I thought the ending was a little weird though, I thought it would have been more exciting, but it was just, OK well that's it then. Other than that I would say good watch. The characters are all interesting and you really get a feel for their lives in the short chapters, especially the wife and the sister, those two were very emotional. I really like the fact that you don't know what is going to happen at the end until it reaches the end, it is impossible to predict, unlike some other movies that are predictable.

tigerfish50 The story of "The Dead Girl" is broken into five chapters - each focusing on a female character connected in some way to a corpse dumped beside a highway. The first deals with a socially inept young woman, who happens upon the body of a murdered girl during an early morning walk. Somehow the self esteem she gains from the discovery gives her the strength to escape from a constrained life. The second segment concentrates on a female pathologist whose older sister had mysteriously disappeared some years earlier. During her examination of the victim in the morgue, she becomes convinced the corpse is that of her missing sister. The third narrative fragment relates how a neglected wife handles the unexplained absences of a sinister husband. The main character in the fourth episode is the dead woman's mother, who arrives to identify the body, meets her daughter's room-mate - and in the midst of grief has an unexpectedly hopeful encounter. The last chapter tells the story of the murdered girl's last day, and how she came to meet her killer.Needless to say the film is no comedy. The excellent direction, strong characters and sensitive performances combine to lift it above the bleakness of its subject matter, and each of the episodes is intense and contains surprises. If one were being picky, one might argue that the placement of the victim's meeting with her murderer at the end of the film brings it to an unnecessarily downbeat conclusion - but either way, the story has a powerful emotional resonance.

zetes The body of a young woman is discovered naked in a field. This film tells four short stories about the people around this person, and a fifth about the girl herself. It is an amazing achievement, like if Alejandro González Iñárritu made a film where the story worked. The first segment deals with the woman who finds the body (Toni Collette), her unbearable mother (Piper Laurie) and the possibly dangerous stranger she meets (Giovanni Ribisi). The second story is about a young woman (Rose Byrne) whose own sister has been missing for the past 15 years. Of course she misses her sister, but her life has been consumed by her mother's desperate belief that her daughter is alive (Mary Steenburgen plays the mother and Bruce Davison her father). When Byrne, working as a mortician, comes upon the young girl's body, she thinks it may be her sister. Or at least she hopes so. James Franco also stars as Byrne's co-worker who wants to be more. The third segment is about the killer himself (Nick Searcy) and his long-suffering wife (Mary Beth Hurt), an extremely religious and oppressive woman who has probably driven Searcy to multiple murders. Hurt discovers her husband's dirty secret. The fourth segment is about the dead girl's real mother (Marcia Gay Harden), who has to come to grips with her own failure as a mother (her daughter ran to L.A. to become an actress and instead ended up a prostitute). The fifth and final stars Brittany Murphy as the girl. It's pretty hard to watch so soon after her death. It's absolutely devastating. Most of the movie is quietly devastating. The second segment, even if it didn't directly connect with Murphy's character, was the most powerful to me. Byrne and Steenburgen are both undervalued actresses, and the climactic argument between them is extraordinarily powerful. My second favorite would be the fourth segment. Marcia Gay Harden is another actress who can almost never do wrong, and she delivers here (in a film of great performances, hers is definitely the best). I liked the other three segments a lot, too. Writer/director Karen Moncrieff falls into melodrama once in a while, especially during the final sequence (though she ends it at a perfect moment, encapsulating the film's major theme, of mother/daughter relationships) - junkie prostitutes are a film subject that is maybe a little too overexplored. But mostly she creates three-dimensional characters and moving situations. Her direction is not unique, but I'd rather have it straight than showy (screw you Iñárritu). Plus, the most overlooked aspect of direction is bringing out the performances, and she does that over and over again here. It's a remarkable film (that certainly did not deserve to be released pretty much straight to DVD, though I definitely see how hard this one would be to sell). I want to see her first feature and I hope to see Moncrieff find a place in actual theaters in the future.

KineticSeoul This movie is about five different people finding out about the dead girl and is dividing into 5 chapters. The Stranger, The Daughter, The Mother, The Wife, and finally The Dead Girl. and it mostly revolves around the dead girl and how people in the movie deal with it since related people are interwoven around the murder of the dead girl played by Brittany Murphy who does a great job with the role that is given to her on the last act. Although every actor and actresses bring great acting to this movie, each chapter is shot a bit differently, the difference is slight but if you pay attention to the movie you can see it, which is actually a good thing. This is a dark tale and has a dark atmosphere to it but is still intriguing at the same time, this was like watching a puzzle get put together with every chapter adding a piece to the mystery. But if your expecting a movie that is a thriller, you will be disappointed cause this movie is far from being a thriller. But what it is, is a haunting and intriguing film that is worth checking out. Every actor and actress put on a good show without going over the top, and I found that Brittany Murphy's performance was noteworthy.7.5/10