‘Psycho Killer’ Movie Review: Serial-Killer Thriller Is Just About As Generic As Its Title
Photo from 20th Century Studios
From Jeremy Kibler
With either the laziest or most definitive title, Psycho Killer should be far better than it is, considering its pedigree and long development, as a grisly crime thriller from the writer of Se7en. Screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker wrote the script for longtime producer Gavin Polone’s directorial debut, and judging by the use of pay phones, classified ads, and car cigarette lights, this might as well have come out around the time of most ‘90s thrillers involving serial killers. That wouldn’t be such a bad thing if it didn’t all feel as indistinct and generic as its moniker — and no, the Talking Heads song is not on the soundtrack. Longlegs, this is sadly not.
Georgina Campbell, who knows how to carry a horror movie or three, plays Jane Archer, a Kansas police state trooper who witnesses her husband, a fellow officer, slain on the side of a road by a mysterious motorist he pulled over. The killer gets away and turns out to be the “Satanic Slasher,” who has been leaving a trail of bodies as part of a much bigger plan that’ll wipe out the entire east coast. Not even two days after burying her husband, the grieving Jane won’t sleep until she puts a bullet in her husband’s elusive murderer and sets out on her own investigation across state lines.
Cracking a case along with a compelling central character can make for a fascinating narrative. The Silence of the Lambs and, of course, Se7en, did this, as did a long string of other serial-killer thrillers thereafter (Hideaway, Copycat, Nightwatch, Taking Lives, Suspect Zero, Zodiac, just to name a few). Unfortunately, the case here is not worth cracking and the tragic figure at the center isn’t allowed to be that compelling. Through absolutely no fault of Campbell, the characterization for Jane begins and ends with “dogged” and “pregnant,” and the fully capable performer gives the thinly drawn character all she can. The main highlight here might be the “Satanic Slasher,” himself. With a hulking, muscular frame and an absurdly menacing baritone voice, James Preston Rogers cuts an imposing figure as the titular psycho killer, even with his face obscured by a hood of stringy hair or a gas mask. This is the second horror movie seen recently where a professional wrestler plays a killer, and both athletes deserve better movies.
There are pockets of tension here and there but never anything that amounts to much; a set-piece involving a stranded couple sets up a tense situation, only for the arrival of help to spiral everything in big, bombastic fashion, and the murder method in a church confessional is certainly unexpected. There’s also the extended sequence in a mansion. In an amusing detour that comes out of a weirder, more entertaining movie, Malcolm McDowell shows up as a grocery store magnate and, oh, the leader of nubile satanists having Chinese takeout and then engaging in their last drug-infused orgy. It all reaches a level of bad camp but camp nonetheless, even during the inevitable bloodletting that gets the operatic slo-mo treatment.
With a finished product receiving a theatrical release by a Disney-owned studio like this, two questions come to mind. (1) What did anyone see in this project? And, (2) could an auteur (like David Fincher) had made something special with this script? We’ll never know. As is, Psycho Killer is just an outdated, run-of-the-mill copycat of other, better movies with all of the trappings that never materialize into the real deal.
Rating: 2/5
Psycho Killer is currently in theaters.
