The Silence of the Lambs (1991) movie poster

The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

"To enter the mind of a killer she must challenge the mind of a madman."
ThumbScore
👍 91%Google users liked it ⓘ
Critics Score
🎬 90%
CrimeThrillerDrama

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Director
Runtime
1h 59m
Rated
R
Country
United States of America
Language
English
TMDB Rating
8.3/10 (17,695 votes)
Rotten Tomatoes
95%
Metacritic
86

Cast

Jodie Foster as Clarice Starling · 72% avg
Anthony Hopkins as Dr. Hannibal Lecter · 72% avg
Scott Glenn as Jack Crawford · 72% avg
Ted Levine as Jame Gumb · 70% avg
Anthony Heald as Dr. Frederick Chilton · 74% avg
Brooke Smith as Catherine Martin · 68% avg
Diane Baker as Senator Ruth Martin · 77% avg
Kasi Lemmons as Ardelia Mapp · 71% avg

Is The Silence of the Lambs good?

Yes. 91% of real audiences liked it, by Google's archived audience score. Critics agree, scoring it 90%.

Where it ranks on ThumbScore

Rank in its genre
#20 / 1253 · Crime
Rank in its year
#4 / 61 · 1991
Rank among its director's films
#1 / 5 · Jonathan Demme

By audience score, among films with 500 or more votes.

Overview

Clarice Starling is a top student at the FBI's training academy. Jack Crawford wants Clarice to interview Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a brilliant psychiatrist who is also a violent psychopath, serving life behind bars for various acts of murder and cannibalism. Crawford believes that Lecter may have insight into a case and that Starling, as an attractive young woman, may be just the bait to draw him out. Wikipedia ↗

About the Film

The Silence of the Lambs is a 1991 American psychological horror thriller directed by Jonathan Demme, based on Thomas Harris's 1988 novel. The film stars Jodie Foster as Clarice Starling, a young FBI trainee who is sent to interview the imprisoned cannibalistic serial killer Dr. Hannibal Lecter, played by Anthony Hopkins, in hopes of gaining insights that will help catch another serial killer known as Buffalo Bill.

What develops between Starling and Lecter is one of cinema's most compelling and unsettling relationships — a psychological chess match in which Lecter offers his brilliant criminal profiling expertise in exchange for personal details about Clarice's troubled past. The Silence of the Lambs achieved the extraordinary distinction of winning all five major Academy Awards — Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay — a feat accomplished only twice before, by It Happened One Night and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Anthony Hopkins's portrayal of Hannibal Lecter, despite appearing on screen for only approximately 16 minutes, became one of the most iconic performances in cinema history and was voted the greatest movie villain of all time by the American Film Institute.

Jodie Foster's Clarice Starling was equally celebrated as a groundbreaking portrayal of a woman navigating a male-dominated profession while confronting genuine evil. Jonathan Demme's intimate close-up cinematography, in which characters appear to look directly at the audience, created an unprecedented sense of psychological claustrophobia.

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