Critics reviews

Once the older woman reveals her true nature, the film becomes a relatively conventional stalker tale, and the psychological insights of the first act seem for naught. Even then the film doesn’t lack for fun visuals—I just wished there were a better script to go with them.

It leaves the impression of a cinematic elevator pitch in which some wonderful actors are cast in the role of stick figures and given hardly a chance to humanize them.

This isn’t the top of Jordan’s oeuvre, but sometimes movies gain fascination for the way they absorb and reflect the day’s social currents, including our media-inspired anxiety.

I think that many women will find Greta a particularly anxiety-provoking and haunting movie, not just because of the twisted mother/daughter bond made palpable by two fearless actors, but also because the object, which incites a struggle that by the end of the film borders on Grand Guignol, is a handbag.

Greta excels at its bizarre balancing act, maintaining an amusing self-awareness that avoids glib disdain. Huppert radiates an understanding of the film's queer sensibility — as if playing an astutely designed caricature of her most controversial roles — and grounds the melodrama and contrivance of the film in equal parts pathos and pathology.

A skillfully executed psychological thriller with not quite enough in the way of psychology or thrills to be as disturbing or diverting as it should be. And maybe not enough Isabelle Huppert, either, though she is the major and almost sufficient reason to bother with the film in the first place.

A renowned Irish auteur whose diverse filmography jumps between genres, Jordan twists and contorts conventional thriller tropes to maximize Greta’s unshakeable neediness.

The filmmaker's expressively cockeyed impulses soon take over (he's ably assisted by the terrific cinematographer Seamus McGarvey), and the resulting craziness is quite delightful to behold in the moment and to reflect on after.