Miss Violence

"Miss Violence" is a Greek film about a family's disturbing and dysfunctional dynamic, where the granddad is a dominating patriarch that obsessively controls the remaining members of the household.

In the very first five minutes of the movie, we see a young girl celebrating her eleventh birthday, then suddenly, jumping off the balcony with a wide smile on her face, for the rest of the time you wonder the reason for such shocking behaviour, and once the cause is revealed, it definitely becomes harder to sit through the film.

I have mixed feelings towards "Miss Violence", I didn't completely hate it, but I can't call it a good film either, and the reason for that is the many illogical conveniences and actions that I can't dismiss, and the performances that range from fine to simply awful. Not to mention, there are some dark and repulsive scenes that are completely unnecessary.

The majority of the actors have pretty much the same job, which is sitting around with a blank face, and yet, they still managed to mess that up, most of them slip up here and there, but the kids...man the kids are just unnatural, to put it nicely. There's one scene where the youngest girl is slapping her brother, but you can clearly see how unconvincing it is, and the editor doesn't help at hiding the technical errors either, so what is supposed to be an effective scene becomes a comical one. Yikes.

I don't have much to say about this without crossing spoilers territory, and that speaks for itself, there isn't anything special about the film, sure it is very well made, and yes there are some strong but few scenes with great camera movements, but that isn't enough to save it from the deep whole it's already in. There are other better versions of this story out there that definitely deserve your time.

This is a prime example of a movie trying to be edgy but failing, it has redeemable qualities, but it's all been done before better. This is a high Rental.