Chloë Grace Moretz describes how female-driven stalker thriller 'Greta' subverts the genre
Both star Chloë Grace Moretz and writer-director Neil Jordan will admit that Greta treads on familiar terrain as a stalker thriller. A stalker targets someone (Moretz’s Frances) and grows more increasingly threatening as the story goes on.
But this is a film that deviates from typical genre fare, Moretz explained. Not only is the titular stalker a female (we of course saw that play out in 1992’s Single White Female), but she’s an older woman — played by 65-year-old Elle Oscar nominee Isabelle Huppert. The third lead in the film, Frances’ best friend Erica (Maika Monroe), is also female. There are no major male characters.
In other words, this one passes the Bechdel test with flying colors.
“I of course loved the idea of the film, I loved how it harkened back to Basic Instinct or Fatal Attraction,” Moretz (Kick-Ass, Carrie) told Yahoo Entertainment at the film’s Los Angeles press day (watch above). “But it subverts the tropes of the genre by casting Isabelle Huppert instead of Anthony Hopkins.
“It was three women at the helm of this story that took an attainable, exciting story that we have all seen and loved — as Get Out did — and it subverts the genre by casting completely different lens and perspective. And I think that was an opportunity which I didn’t want to miss.”
Jordan, the Irish filmmaker best known for The Crying Game and Interview with the Vampire who signed on as director and co-writer after an early script by Ray Wright, never thought he’d make a stalker movie.
“It’s a genre I’ve never approached before, I never thought I would,” he told us. “It moved through territory that was familiar to me, perhaps familiar to audiences as well — maybe a little bit overfamiliar. But at the center of it there was the possibility for me of constructing this dark fairy tale.
“There was the absolutely intriguing possibility of creating a monster out of this sophisticated female. Normally in these stalker movies the invasive threat is a man.”
Greta is now in theaters. Watch the trailer:
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