The Name that sends shivers down your spine. I think 1991 changed what we called scary. A whole new world of terror opened up when Anthony Hopkins stared at the camera. This was something that stirred inside you that was both profound and horrifying at the same time. Even today when I think of Dr. Lecter completely tied with the face mask, standing in front of the woman politician complementing on her dress, I feel a chill
And yet this sequel to the masterpiece disappoints immensely. It feels like a Hollywood movie that is hurriedly written into a book. The plot revolves around the gross and gruesome more than the mind-scare. Thomas Harris seems to have forgotten that the explicit stuff of the first book/movie was something that built on the basic psychological plot and made it scary. But the core of the fright was still in the mind, not in the blood. But, between pigs, revenge, brutality & a few sob stories, Harris seems to have completely lost the plot.
What is good about the book is that it builds both Dr. Lecter and Clarice further as people. I definitely got to know them much better by the time I was through with the book. I got to know them as well as they get to know each other in the book. But, beyond that there is nothing. A melodramatic past sob story of Hannibal (almost as a reason for why he is the way he is), becomes a bit too much to take.
Towards the end, it seems that Thomas Harris remembers that this was supposed to be a psychological nerve-wrecker, not a Wes Craven movie and he quickly builds in some strange, un-connected mind-games that Hannibal plays with Clarice and with the reader. But, by the time I got to that stage of the book, I was so keen on finishing the book, that I had stopped caring. I just wanted to the book to end... But end, it doesn't!
Yet another sequel that goes kaput. I may still watch the movie (since Hollywood is what the book was anyway), but I may take some time before I begin Red Dragon, Mr. H.
