Reviews
[TIFF Review] Neil Jordan’s ‘Greta’ Falters By Falling Somewhere Between Thriller and High Camp
There’s a long Hollywood history of thrillers in which random strangers innocently insert themselves into the lives of our protagonists and then expose the fact that they are psychos. The subgenre peaked in the 80s and 90s when titles like The Crush, Fatal Attraction and Single White Female raked in big money and even greater notoriety, but in recent years its popularity has fizzled out. These days it lives on in infrequent (and often meek) entries like 2011’s The Roommate or in the complementary “vengeful psycho ex” film such as Obsessed and The Perfect Guy.
Leave it to esteemed art house director Neil Jordan to try and inject some life – and class – back into the proceedings. The creative mind behind notorious blockbusters like The Crying Game and Interview with The Vampire digs deep into the Freudian sandbox for his latest film Greta, starring the unlikely pairing of Chloë Grace Moretz and French icon Isabelle Huppert.
Frances (Grace Moretz) is a fresh-faced newcomer to New York. She’s rooming with Erica (genre vet Maika Monroe) in an amazing open concept loft that only people in the movies can afford, working at a fancy seafood restaurant and learning to navigate the city. Frances is also slightly estranged from her father (Colm Feore) following the death of her mother from cancer – he is concerned about her, but all Frances yearns for is freedom and independence.
One day Frances discovers a lost purse on the subway and, despite Erica’s insistence that they treat themselves to a spa/colonic with the contents, Frances elects to return the item in person. She winds up striking up an unlikely friendship with Greta (Huppert), a lonely widower who appears kind, but also a little odd.
It’s no spoiler to confirm that Greta is not what she appears. The older woman begins to ingratiate herself into Frances’ life (a fact that perplexes and bothers Erica), slowly at first and then increasingly making demands on her time. One night during a dinner at Greta’s house, Frances makes a shocking discovery that prompts her to sever ties with the older woman, which sets in motion the main plot of the film as Greta stalks, harasses and threatens Frances at home and at work.
As the titular character, Huppert completely steals the show. Greta is a deranged, neurotic villain posing in plain sight as a kindly old woman. Half of the fun of Greta is watching Huppert’s obvious delight at performing unsavoury acts. This is especially true in the final act of the film when Greta reveals her full crazy intentions and the violence begins to escalate. The film’s highlight is a scene with Huppert involving a gun, a body and a little dancing and it is so amazingly ridiculous that it’s almost worth the price of admission.
As lead, Grace Moretz is unfortunately far less engaging. She seems to be aiming for wide-eyed innocent and lands instead on either sleepwalking or histrionic. Frances is so bland that it is hard to understand why Greta would become dangerously obsessed with her.
It is especially difficult when Frances is compared to Erica. Maika Monroe essentially steals the film out from under her co-star by making Erica imminently likeable, sarcastic and a little flirty. At one point Greta begins sending Frances a series of photographs of Erica while the latter is drinking alone at the bar, prompting a “chase by text” sequence as Frances desperately tries to guide her roommate to safety. Later Erica, examining Greta’s pictures of her, comments how attractive she looks and compliments the stalker for taking a good photo. It’s this kind of quip that makes Erica so much more enjoyable to watch than Frances.
Greta’s biggest failure, however, is the film’s reluctance to fully embrace its full camp potential. These kinds of films benefit from being as outlandish as possible and while there are a few delightfully silly moments (and one truly kick ass moment of gore involving a mundane kitchen utensil), they’re too few and far between. The body count is also surprisingly low, which is unusual for the subgenre in comparison to earlier iterations, which would have had the guts to knock off at least a few more characters.
As it stands, Greta simply isn’t frightening enough to be a great horror film, and it’s not campy enough to be a guilty pleasure. Greta could have been great fun – and a much stronger film – had it leaned into its genre origins. Instead it’s just so-so, despite a very game Isabelle Huppert.
Reviews
‘The Mouths’ Review: Takashi Shimizu’s Cursed Tree Horror Stumbles at the Finish [Fantasia 2026]
Director Takashi Shimizu’s latest, The Mouths, has a pretty straightforward premise: what if an enormous, threatening tree at the edge of a cemetery contained a killer curse? Touch it, make a wish, and let the horror begin.
As fans of Shimizu’s work know, it’s never quite so straightforward. The Japanese director, best known for the Ju-on films, delights in non-linear narratives and haunting specters. In this capacity, The Mouths more or less adheres to formula.
The screenplay was written by Masahiro Yamaura and adapts Sesuji’s novella A Questionnaire About the Mouth. The source material provides a framing device that opens the film before it is swiftly forgotten, only to return in the film’s closing moments in highly amusing fashion.
In between, the film tells the story of four friends who investigate an urban legend of a cursed tree, including soft-spoken Shota (Rihito Itagaki), sensitive Mirei (Momona Kasahara), outgoing Ann (Ai Yoshikawa), and her boastful boyfriend Tatsuya (Keito Tsuna).
Initially, the action seems straightforward: the four teens drive to the cemetery, discussing what Shota heard about the tree with a brief pause at a convenience store in between. Throughout all of these early scenes, the interaction among the teens hints at a complicated dynamic, including a minor spat between Ann and Tatsuya, and Shota’s brief but meaningful glance at Ann in the rearview mirror. These sequences are regularly interrupted by direct address police interviews as present-day Shota, Tatsuya, and Mirei make ominous declarations about the events of that evening.
The first act works because The Mouths is slowly building tension around what happened. It’s obvious from their statements that things will go awry, but Yamaura’s script teases things out. Even when they arrive at the cemetery, rather than proceed directly to the cursed object, the action pauses so Shota can propose a specific course of action: they will proceed to the tree, individually, in a specific order. The wait for the action to kick in is both tantalizing and agonizing.
First up: Shota, followed by Tatsuya, then Ann. Mirei, meanwhile, becomes increasingly reticent, which alarms the others who have already noted her sensitivity to otherworldly phenomena.
When Ann disappears, the film moves into a new act as the remaining members of the group search for her while seemingly being haunted by both her and the tree. This is where Shimizu’s penchant for ghostly figures lurking in the background and peeking around corners comes to the forefront, including one stand-out moment that leans into the curse’s origin: the visual of a hanged woman with a grotesquely stretched neck.
The middle stretch feels a little too familiar to the director’s work, however, so it’s exciting when the last act upends much of what we thought we knew. There is a reason that the film is called The Mouths: not only are most of these people revealed to be unreliable narrators, but it is revealed that several interactions throughout the film were manipulated by characters with malicious intent. These people are not quite what they seemed.
This revisionist filter on the events of the movie’s first half is provocative and enticing, though the creative team struggles to execute it without devolving into messy confusion. There’s at least one plot beat that should be a massive revelation, but both the visuals and the dialogue render it quite confusing, which robs the moment of some of its power. This is a shame, because the last act is what makes the film stand out from other curse/ghost movies.
The performances of the main four teens are solid, with Itagaki getting to show the most range. Many of the supporting characters, including a pair of frenemies who also become involved in the curse, as well as the detective investigating the case, feel a bit superfluous; the film would have benefitted from cutting back some of these scenes or, alternately, beefing up a few of these roles to justify their inclusion.
The Mouths’ other big element is its sound design. The area around the tree is surrounded by wet mud that slurps and sucks at shoes, while the cursed bark is covered in cicadas, whose distinctive buzz and crunchy shells provide evocative foley.
Overall, The Mouths is a solid but slightly inessential addition to Shimizu’s filmography. For the auteur’s fans, there’s plenty to appreciate, particularly the way the Japanese master sets up scares and pays them off, including good moments in a library and later when the detective is driving. On the other hand, the film’s big reveal is handled so clumsily that its potency is disappointingly muted.
The Mouths is a decent time, but it’s hard to overlook some of its weaknesses.
The Mouths made its North American premiere at the 2026 Fantasia International Film Festival. Release info TBD.
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