With its pairing of a perverse, invasive anti-hero and a questing, self-searching heroine, Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs (1990) is a narrative of pursuit at several levels. Yvonne Tasker explores the way the film weaves together gothic, horror and thriller conventions to generate both a distinctive variation on the cinematic portrayal of insanity and crime, and a fascinating intervention in the sexual politics of genre. She identifies the film as a key reference-point for tracking the 1990s obsession with police procedure and serial killing, analysing its themes of reason and madness, identity and belonging, aspiration and transformation.