The latest from Irish director Neil Jordan is a nail-biting thriller that successfully proves loneliness can breed pure evil. Enjoying its world premiere at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival, Greta offers a warning to kind souls that easily offer up their trust to smiling strangers.
Frances (Chloë Grace Moretz) plays a sweet yet naive young woman who has just moved from Boston to work as a waitress at an elegant restaurant in Manhattan. After spotting a designer handbag on the subway she goes out of her way to return it to its rightful owner.
Frances knocks on Greta’s door, and is quickly swept up by the mysterious widows penchant for piano playing. We learn Frances has recently lost her mother, and feeling alienated in her new city, finds a maternal surrogate in the attention seeking stranger who puts on a perfectly posh Parisian accent. The two become fast friends, forcing the audience to squirm with suspicion as Greta’s obsessive attentions escalate.
As Greta unfolds, those who have been haunted by stalkers in the online dating world will slump in their seats with dread. It immediately makes one reconsider how easily we should share our phone number with total strangers.
Once Frances politely informs her new friend that she’d like to be left alone, the perfectly quaffed Greta quickly transforms into a desperate diva hellbent on getting what she wants. If you’ve ever had nightmares about being relentlessly stalked or kidnapped by a lonely lunatic, Greta is the psychological thriller that will keep you hugging your pillows tight at night.
