Greta feels like a dispatch straight from the early-‘90s – and I’m not complaining. The wave of ‘90s nostalgia has started to crest recently – see: Lady Bird, Mid-90s, Pen15, Riverdale’s flashback episode – so naturally the next genre to bubble up to the surface is the sleazy thriller.
Eschewing the Fincher-esque gloss typical in modern thrillers for a thin veneer of pure trash, Greta most closely resembles thrillers like Single White Female and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, centring on an apparently innocent friendship between a naïve young woman (Chloë Grace Moretz) and an increasingly sinister older woman (Isabelle Huppert). With intimate familiarity with ‘90s style, director Neil Jordan – of The Crying Game and Interview with the Vampire fame – Jordan plays it straight rather playing tribute, producing a film that splits the difference between pseudo-realism and pure schlock.
The final product is…honestly, pretty forgettable, defined by a handful of memorable thrills wrapped around a ropey narrative and a dire, underplayed lead performance from Grace Moretz. (Huppert is fun, at least, but you’d expect that.) But if you’ve been itching for the kind of trashy thriller you don’t see on the silver screen anymore, you’ll find that itch well-and-truly scratched by Greta.