Best movie of this year hands down!

Simply A Masterpiece

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

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.

Why people are so excited about this movie leaves me at a complete loss.When you are watching a movie you want it to go somewhere but it's just dragging on en on en on in 5 plots that go absolutely nowhere. This movie is just a complete waste of time.Why am i giving it 3 out of 10 then? well the filming and the acting is indeed as others say very good, it is just the "story" that goes nowhere and really makes you think at the end: why the hell did I spend 1 1/2 hour watching this movie.You want to indulge yourself in complete misery, unhappiness en despair? Go watch this movie then and you wont be disappointed, you want to be entertained by a movie to forget your own slumber in life, stay far, far away from it.

Karen Moncrieff's 'The Dead Girl' tells the harrowing tale of five women whose fractured lives are affected by the discovery of a dead girl. There's the fragile and abused Arden (Toni Collette) who discovers the body, the tormented Leah (Rose Byrne) the medical examiner of the body, frustrated Ruth (Mary-Beth Hurt), the wife of the man who murdered the girl, a concerned Melora, mother of the dead girl and the title girl (Brittany Murphy) desperate to get presents to her daughter.Moncrief is a fine storyteller and she does it with profound depth. She grabs the viewers attention from the very beginning and manages to keep the film under control without sensationalizing the story. Her subtle writing and direction are exceptional. She divides the story into five chapters and she takes the method of non-linear storytelling to a new level. At first she starts off by showing us the perspective of the stranger who is only linked to the girl in the title because she found her mutilated body. Then she shows us the point of view of the medical examiner, followed by the killer's wife, mother and the girl in question. There is a lyrical quality in the way these five sad stories are portrayed. The score is efficiently used.'The Dead Girl' additionally shines with one of the finest ensembles that delivers poignant performances. Toni Collette, Rose Byrne, Marcia Gay Harden, Piper Laurie, Mary Beth Hurt, Brittany Murphy, Kerry Washington, Mary Steenburgen, James Franco, Josh Brolin and Giovanni Ribisi are astonishing in their portrayal of broken people.'The Dead Girl' is a frightening, sad, poignant and beautifully crafted little film about shattered lives and their longing for something different. The haunting fade-out in the end lingers in the questioning mind.

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.