Directed By Daniel Farrands

Starring – Peyton List, Tobin Bell, Lydia Hearst

The Plot – Based on Aileen Wuornos’s early life, America’s most notorious female serial killer, back in 1976 a young Aileen (List) arrives in Florida searching for a new life that will help her escape her tragic past, marries a wealthy Yacht Club president (Bell) and has the chance to start again as part of Florida’s high society. But tormented by inner demons she surrenders to her murderous impulses and wreaks havoc in the peaceful seaside community of Deland, Florida.

Rated R for scenes involving violence, drug use, and adult language

american boogeywoman trailer – YouTube

POSITIVES

– Credible idea. Even if the execution is lacking a bit in factual accuracies department, the plot to depict the first act in Aileen’s torturous road is at least an intriguing one, full of opportunities to depict the woman she was before she became the monster. This is the momentary instance where I credit Farrands as a screenwriter because instead of attempting to tackle the same exhausting story that has been told in an Academy Award nominated film, as well as countless documentaries along the way, he instead chooses to focus on the youthful side of her instability, when so much about her later years was molded in and around her time in the sunshine state. This allows Farrands the freedom to essentially make Wournous anyone who he sees fit, which in turn is a dangerous allowance in itself, but even despite the abundance of flaws that persist within the film, there’s still something endearing to seeing this eventual serial killer free amongst her peers and reaching for the initial building blocks that made her the biggest female serial killer in American history.

– Intricate sound. There’s only one elevation in the technical inconsistencies that have mostly mamed Farrands cheap budgetary productions, and it comes in the blanketing of a detailed sound mixing that immerses us in the elements of the environment. Most of the time it stems from physical conflicts, particular blunt force trauma in the head or torso that rattle our ears with intensity, and at least offer something substantial with regards to the way the action is presented. Other times it’s in weather influences, like a third act thunderstorm, that mixes superbly with the urgency developing in the forefront of the conflict. It is easily the single greatest aspect of technicality that you are going to find anywhere in this film, and at least temporarily allowed me the capability of forgetting that I was watching a C-movie production with laughably bad mastering throughout.

NEGATIVES

– Clumsy direction. Once again, Farrands is his own worst enemy, taking a real life figure of terror, and fleshing her out in a way that is cinematically irresponsible to all parties involved. Because of such, not only do we get a story that is mostly factually inaccurate, made apparent by a scene near the end of the movie where Aileen herself admits such, but also one that is tonally improper for the kind of film we’re giftwrapped to interpret. It results in several scenes so coldly delivered in a creative sense that I couldn’t help but laugh at how cheesy and over-the-top they each sold the intention of their deliveries, making this a fitting return to form for Farrands, who at least remotely evolved during “American Boogeyman: Ted Bundy”, but here regresses with an off-screen helming so blandly executed that it wastes the effort in conjuring up something substantial to a story whose greatest hits have already been played.

– Horrendous cast. Both sides of the combined ensemble, lead and supporting, provide a complete incoherence of personality or momentary depth that makes even one of them effective in the channeling of their characters. Part of the problem is certainly the lack of material given to their thinly written characterization, which I will get to in a second, but overall there’s never a second when I believed these were actual people with meaningful motivations. This is no more relevant than with Peyton List, who I not only didn’t buy as Wournous, but also concern myself with what she considers to be emotion. When she’s angry, she shows her teeth in a way that subsequently also looks like she’s trying to unleash the widest kiss in the history of man. Each of Farrands films to date have been awful, but she’s easily the worst performance in any of them, and it’s a shame considering I admire her in Netflix’s “Cobra Kai”. Tobin Bell is literally counting his money from a paycheck film on-screen, so no need to harp on the monotonous enveloping in his performance, which he disappears from for nearly thirty minutes during the second half. Finally, the supporting characters (Mostly producers for the film) outline first time performances without actually saying it. There’s no brief commitment to the lines they’re reading, nor is there any semblance of chemistry between them that sells the roles they’re being asked to portray, making this feel like a porno without any of the fun that comes with it.

– One-dimensional. Just who am I supposed to be rooting for in this movie? Typically, those opposing one of America’s most visceral serial killers would be the desired objection, but when you consider that her opposition results in these one-note noobs without an element redeeming value between them, that desire becomes more than slightly obscured. Every man is a rapist, or at least an upper class snob whose only driving factor is the almighty dollar. Every woman is bi-polar to the sense that their emotions change often in the middle of a scene for no apparent reason, while feeding into the bitchy jealousness that Farrands feels all women have for each other. As for Aileen herself, List’s demeanor is so over-the-top and constantly on needles at all times that she’s literally a Karen without the racial discrimination at her arsenal. Considering this story is a prequel to her eventual madness, there’s a tragic mishandling of the opportunity that seems to hint that Aileen was always this way, and that no reason or motive is needed for a woman presented as Jason Voorhees or Freddy Krueger.

– Strange spending. If you still believe that a movie’s musical score doesn’t amount to meaningful benefits within a film’s presentation, consider that the assorted tracks and compositions here from composer Steve Moore outline a continued distraction to the film, and not of the most compelling kind. When the score isn’t devastating your ears with soap opera cues of the most heavy-handed kind, it’s illustrating audible devastation in these series of muzak instrumentals that are so obviously a take on classic rock songs for the time. One such instance pertains to Fleetwood Mac’s “Go Your Own Way” during a boat sequence, where the chorus of the track (Performed terribly, by the way) repeats itself to the point of 8 bit Nintendo infamy. There is one lyrical song in the film; Nazareth’s “Love Hurts”, but not even performed by a band that sounds anything close to Nazareth. It’s the worst kind of way to spend the few pennies of production that the movie actually has, and cements what is a late season addition front runner to my least favorite score of the entire year.

– Amateur editing. Sweet Jesus, how does a movie’s pacing manage to attain feeling rushed and plodding under the same creative umbrella? It does so with editing that barely scrapes the surface of its 80 minute run time, while leaving any element of nuance away from audience eyes. There’s certainly padding, as evidenced by the not one, but two firework sequences in the same scene, which carry on without cuts away from their blasts for what feels like an eternity. On the other end of the spectrum, this is a movie with no such thing as character motivations or momentary intentions, as attitudes and opinions change long before the blink of an eye, and every scene conveys something monumental without the down time in between to cool our engines before the next big impact. It’s a sloppy, inconsistent hodgepodge of cutting and pasting that does still attain a coherent plot, but not one with any element of patience to let the subtleties stir, creating a cliff notes juxtaposition that underwhelms at every turn.

– Mindless dialogue. When this film isn’t wasting your time with an experience that paints nothing original to Aileen’s story, you’re supplanted with these awful lines of dialogue that wipe away humanity with the vocal manure that exits from these mindless drones. Examples like “A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do”, or “Everything comes with a price, and now you gotta pay” would normally be the worst offenses in any movie, but here are secondary to a line/joke so bizarrely bad that I shook each time I heard it. Tobin Bell plays millionaire commodore Lewis Fell, and the ice is broken between he and Aileen when she says “Your tombstone could read here Lewis Fell”. Hearing this once would make you want to put your head through a window, but four different times during the film makes you wish Aileen would put you out of your misery, and end this mumbling dread that is too meandering to exist in a Hallmark Christmas movie.

– Special effects. Yes, there’s even room for budgetary blunders in the form of these visual renderings that outline the movie’s cheap emphasis where the cinematography can only meet it halfway. This comes in the materializing of lightning strikes during a thunderstorm, and is 90’s music video levels of flawed computer generation. The coloring of its coordination with the foreground of our scene is bad enough, highlighting each of the characters with a greenish hue that a film of this caliber can’t remove in post-production, but the placements of its strikes attaining a hilarious consistency for all of the wrong reasons. The visual strikes themselves land in the exact same place regardless of how long the scene persists, removing ages old logic in meteorology that alludes to the idea that clouds don’t move, they just remain dormant when convenient. Truly baffling.

My Grade: 2/10 or F-