First-time feature helmer Nate Taylor, working from an adroitly constructed screenplay by Peter Moore Smith, skillfully evokes a clammy sense of dread in this stealthily suspenseful indie.
Its characterizations may be overwrought — it is a thriller, after all — and the audience might prefer to have sympathy for a character without being practically told to feel it. But the acting is strong.
While only sporadically effective in its attempt at creating a modern-day Psycho, Forgetting the Girl does manage to sustain a sufficiently disturbing mood that is not easily forgotten.
Forgetting the Girl ends up building towards a massive revelation, one that suddenly gives up the ghost and allows the film to define itself as one specific genre. Not romance or thriller or comedy, mind you, but that type of indie that plays peek-a-boo with its topics for long enough before springing something that allows the final twenty minutes to be occupied by bargain-basement pop psychology.
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The DissolveMike D'Angelo
The DissolveMike D'Angelo
First-time director Nate Taylor, who has a background in editing, gives Forgetting The Girl impressive technical polish, but the performances he gets from his young, unknown cast are strictly amateur-hour.