Psycho Killer arrives in theaters on Friday, February 20.
Psycho Killer is a grim mess. In fact, it’s the draggiest, sloppiest revenge-driven road trip serial killer mystery since… 1997’s Switchback? It also might be the only revenge-driven road trip serial killer mystery since Switchback. Maybe these particular elements just shouldn’t blend.
Psycho Killer invites you into the lumbering word of the “Satanic Slasher,” the latest hulking masked maniac to take a stab at becoming an insta-classic within the pantheon of horror hellions. He’s tall, swole, has a voice like Mike Lanegan (RIP), and loves hacking, slashing, bludgeoning, shooting, and slurping (?) his way across the country in a quest to, as he writes in blood, “open the gates.” The massive James Preston Rogers holds court well as the Satanic one, and the character has a lot of promise, his face constantly obscured by long hair, hoods, sunglasses, or all three. Unfortunately, first-time feature director Gavin Polone mostly wastes this giant madman’s potential, attempting scares that fall flat and staging bloodlettings that don’t pop.
There’s a one particular massacre scene that closes out a story chapter that should have landed so much bigger and better than it does. Yes, CG blood can be distracting, but that wasn’t the issue here. It’s the staging and framing. Instead of drawing us into the Slasher’s size and might, the camera keeps a weird distance that diminishes his power. Going for oners that also utilize slo-mo only enhance flaws in effects and choreography. Come to think of it, most scenes in Psycho Killer feel like half-measures in need of a few extra tweaks. Palone, a successful TV (Curb Your Enthusiasm) and movie (Zombieland) producer, gives this an earnest shot but when your film is heavily advertised with “from the writer of Se7en” and the director then lacks David Fincher’s command for composition, color, and pacing, the lack of experience will be glaring.
Barbarian’s Georgina Campbell (who can also be seen in Cold Storage right now) plays Jane Archer, a Kansas state trooper on an obsessive cross-country trek to stop the Satanic Slasher, having watched this lunatic murder her husband in front of her. Campbell is more than capable in the role, but Jane’s story is thin and unsurprising. She’s the one we’re supposed to care about and root for, but every slice of her saga is plucked from boring cop stuff – from the needless opposition she faces to the lazy way she puts the puzzle together.
Jane starts with a few interesting complexities but the movie flattens her into a one-note tracker. By the end, she feels like a cardboard cutout. Psycho Killer heavily leans on news/radio reports and (a ton of) ADR for much of Jane’s side of the story. Saw franchise editor/director Kevin Greutert is credited as an additional editor, possibly explaining attempts made to reshape the film in post, to give it some semblance of clarity and voice. The efforts are appreciated but, nonetheless, fruitless.
The film is set in 2007, where things like the internet collide with remnants like payphones, car cigarette lighters, newspaper classifieds (a ’70s/’80s-feeling plot device), and encyclopedia volumes. The end result is a garbled era that only has to be that way because of the killer’s specific plans, and that type of reverse engineering hurts the movie from the get-go. The Slasher goes out of his way to contact people using coded print ads, and do research via libary books, even though the world wide web is readily available. Maybe this is why Jane is able to run circles around the actual task force assigned to find this guy. Because they don’t… do searches on the internet?
It’s weird, but not surprising, that the Satanic Slasher feels like more of a layered personality when all is said and done. After all, Jane’s just a typical “dig two graves” justice seeker. The Slasher has ideas. Preferences. Thirsts. And he also gets to meet up with a gaggle of fellow Satanists, headed by Malcolm McDowell, in a surprising second act stretch of the movie that contains its only offbeat charm and charisma. The Slasher, who basically represents all the human sacrifice Satanic Panic of the ’80s rolled into a giant Undertaker-type behemoth, seeks help from some miscreants who just want to engage in drug-fueled orgies. It’s a fun clash of ideologies and McDowell’s scenes are the only lively, unexpected ones in the film.
With the marketing so focused on Se7en’s screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker, Psycho Killer’s wink-wink promise of a twisted project hamstrings its own efforts. Evoking Se7en also summons expectations of a subversive, swerve-y ending and Psycho Killer doesn’t deliver anything close to being as paradigm-changing. The third act is wildly preposterous, though, if that’s to be Walker’s hallmark. It goes bigger than it needs to, but maybe if it had gone even further people would be talking about this movie a decade from now. It’s too bad Psycho Killer doesn’t build up its (two?) characters enough for you to care whether the Slasher fulfills his grand scheme or not.
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