Jonathan Demme's sleek and creepy The Silence of the Lambs is about an FBI agent-in-training, Clarice Starling, and how she struggles to track down a serial killer, nicknamed “Buffalo Bill”. But the most exciting presence in the film is Anthony Hopkins as Dr. Hannibal Lecter, the brilliant, incarcerated psychopath who agrees to help her in her search. Lecter lives in a Baltimore institution for the criminally insane. When Clarice first goes to see him, descending into the grungy brick corridor reserved for the hospital's most dangerous and deranged patients, she seems to be entering some medieval version of hell. At the very end of the corridor, behind an impenetrable clear-plastic wall, stands Lecter, the psychiatrist who liked to murder people and then eat them, or at least their vital organs. Clarice has been assigned by Jack Crawford, of the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit, to submit Lecter to a standardized questionnaire. What Crawford really wants, though, is Lecter's help in apprehending Buffalo Bill, a sicko who has been murdering women and skinning them. Crawford figures that Clarice, because she's a novice, will bring Lecter out in a way that a more experienced agent couldn't. But Clarice turns out to be savvier than he expected. Her girlish ingenuousness does get to Lecter, but so does her sharp, intuitive mind, since that's what he values most in a person. Lecter does indeed know something of Buffalo Bill, but his information comes with a price: in exchange for telling what he knows, he wants to be housed in a more comfortable facility. As the prison interviews continue between Lecter and Clarice, they develop an eerie and complex relationship.
The SIlence of the Lambs was clearly made by the works of adults. Mr. Demme is a director of both humor and subtlety. The gruesome details are vivid. He also handles the big set pieces with skill. The final confrontation between Clarice and the man she has been pursuing is a knockout, a scene set in pitch dark, with Clarice being stalked by a killer who wears night-vision glasses. The movie is based on the book, but one does not need to read it to be entertained by the film. The overall film itself is eerie but gets the audience hooked and engaged. The Silence of the Lambs is truly a great thriller, “The superbly crafted suspense thriller...slams you like a sudden blast of bone-chilling, pulse-pounding terror.”