The Silence of the Lambs - 8/10

It is especially difficult to provide a review on a film as iconic as Silence of the Lambs. The film is masterfully written as it is adapted by the best-selling novel written by Thomas Harris. This is the fourth movie in a series of 5 films, if watched in chronological order, which I recommend obviously as this is the case with most horror movie series. For those that are interested in watching the whole series, the chronological order is as follows:

1. Hannibal rising (released 2007)

2. Manhunter (1986)

3. Red Dragon (2002)

4. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

5. Hannibal (2001)

The rest of the films will also be reviewed on Spook view for you to judge for yourself, but it is worth noting that the Silence of the Lambs has been considered to be the most popular of all the movies.

The film is about a female FBI trainee named Clarice Starling (played by Jodie Foster) who is assigned a rather high-profile case due to her being a psychology/criminology student. This makes her the perfect candidate as she is required to interview a famous psychiatrist, Hannibal Lecter (played by Anthony Hopkins). The interview with Hannibal is the FBI's way of getting into the mind of a serial killer to try and catch an active killer who skins his victims, and who they called 'Buffalo Bill'.

The most interesting scenes were the ones where Clarice is speaking with Hannibal. Hannibal's character is portrayed perfectly by Anthony Hopkins and his performance overshadows all other aspects of the film for me. The storyline contained some great consistency and twists, but Hannibal has an influence (more like control) throughout. He is an individual of extreme intellect and thrives off of making people uncomfortable in order to expose genuine character and exercise control. Clarice is initially very frightened by Hannibal but she starts to get more and more comfortable around him as he does with her. He starts to admire her intelligence and they start to show each other a level of respect and understanding.

Clarice is portrayed as a young and inexperienced detective whose courage and intelligence is constantly tested. There are many scenes shown where she is shown as the smallest person and often the only woman in the room. For me this shows how much her character has to prove and how hard she has had to work. Even with the useful riddles supplied by Hannibal, she was an invaluable detective in the case and progress may have never been made without her.

Overall I really enjoyed the film. My only reservation would be that it was just not that scary in general. The ending was anticlimactic for me and the story seemed to revolve around Hannibal much more than Buffalo Bill.