The Silence of the Lambs (Film Review)

1991 Orion Pictures
Directed by: Jonathan Demme; Screenplay by: Ted Tally
Starring: Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Scott Glenn, and Ted Levine
MPAA Rating: R; Running Time: 118 Minutes
The Nicsperiment Score: 8/10

Someone named Buffalo Bill is kidnapping young women, murdering, and skinning them. Clarice Starling, a student at the FBI academy, is sent by the desperate bureau to interview an incarcerated serial killer named Hannibal Lecter, hoping to gain insight on Bill, so that they can more easily catch him. Clarice soon finds her head below dark waters. She's on the trail of Bill...and growing closer to Lecter.
1991's Silence of the Lambs is an influential film that kicked off the cinematic and television show serial killer craze, as well as that of the FBI profiler working with a psycho to hunt down a psycho. Without Lambs, my favorite television show of all time, The X-Files, would not exist. The acting by Jodie Foster as Clarice and Anthony Hopkins as Lecter is on the highest tier. The production values, including a death's head moth with a Salvador Dali painting on its back jammed down a woman's throat, and a basement that would serve as one of the most terrifying haunted houses ever constructed, is excellent. Jonathan Demme's direction isn't flashy, surprisingly consisting of a lot of static shots from Clarice's POV, but it gets the job done. The story twists and turns in satisfying ways. This movie is very good...and I don't really like it.
I don't find Hanibal Lecter a believable character. The director called him "a good man, trapped in an insane mind," but that doesn't make any sense. He is a sociopath who eats people. He is evil. It feels like the film almost forgets that, like it wants to have its cake and eat him...uh...it too with the character, presenting him as bad, but not "that bad" somehow, even though he chops off an innocent person's face at one point in this film and wears it. I also find a lot of the film's profiler jargon outdated, and personally, kind of dumb, going against some of the reality I've experienced in the 35 years since the films was released. My verisimilitude while watching The Silence of the Lambs is low. I just don't really like this film...
And yet I cannot pretend like The Silence of the Lambs is not very well-acted, well-written, and well made. Subjectively, I'm not a big fan, even if the film led to one of my favorite all-time things. Objectively, other than the direction being a little too static at times, and the plot taking leaps (Lecter came across the killer before?! Really?!?!), there's little fault I can find in The Silence of the Lambs. Whatever.