Sophomore Smash

Properly following a promising debut (Blue Car) with a more ambitious and successful sophomore feature, writer-director Karen Moncrieff doesn’t disappoint with the dramatic powerhouse The Dead Girl.

Secret Ingredient #2: Coin Operated Machine

It’s hard to say more without revealing too much, so this would be a good time to stop reading until after you’ve seen the movie.

Arden (Toni Collette) discovers the body near the house where she lives with her invalid mother (Piper Laurie in a variation on her Carrie role). The media attention that follows makes Arden seem hot to creepy bag boy Rudy (Giovanni Ribisi), who can’t talk about anything but serial killers when he takes her out.

Leah (Rose Byrne) works in a morgue with Derek (James Franco) but can’t have a life because her sister Jenny disappeared 15 years ago and their mother (Mary Steenburgen) directs all the family’s energy into continuing the search for her. When it appears the dead girl may be Jenny, Leah gets a taste of life after closure. Bruce Davison appears briefly as the girls’ father.

Long-suffering Ruth (Mary Beth Hurt) complains of being stuck in the house while her husband Carl (Nick Searcy) goes out doing “Mike knows what,” as she puts it. After a chance discovery while covering Carl’s job, Ruth thinks she knows what he does too.

Melora (Marcia Gay Harden) drives down to L.A. from Washington to identify the dead girl as her daughter Krista (Brittany Murphy), who ran away from home at 16. Trying to pick up the pieces of Krista’s life, Melora finds that they include a lesbian lover (Kerry Washington) – they’re both prostitutes and junkies - and a three-year-old daughter.

The final story, showing Krista’s last day, is somewhat anticlimactic but fills in a few gaps in the story, including explaining her necklace and “12:13” tattoo, and lets Murphy give the performance of her career. Josh Brolin co-stars as one of her regulars.

You may wonder why such a group of actors would flock to a little-known filmmaker like Moncrieff as if she were Spielberg or Scorsese, but the work they do for her puts a feather in each of their caps so there should be no regrets.

Prepare yourself for an intense experience and The Dead Girl will leave you with no regrets either.

Steve Warren is a local actor and film reviewer. His reviews can also be seen weekly in the Sunday Paper.