Directed By Gavin Polone

Starring – Georgina Campbell, James Preston Rogers, Malcolm McDowell

The Plot – A police officer (Campbell) tracks a killer after her husband (David Tomlinson), a highway patrolman, becomes one of his victims.

Rated R for strong bloody violence, strong sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use and adult language.

Psycho Killer | Official Trailer | Only In Theaters Feb 20

POSITIVES

Clinging to the last bastion of optimism that I have for this once hopeful property, the film at least has a couple of endearing aspects keeping it from being among the worst horror movies that I’ve seen in recent memory, beginning with Georgina Campbell’s professional turn as Jane Archer, the movie’s established protagonist, who gives her all to such a thanklessly tedious and underutilized lead character. While the script essentially only values Jane for her grief, as a means to go after this ruthlessly cold-blooded killer, Campbell imbeds stoic resiliency and virtue to the character in ways that elicits a meaningful screen presence to the movie’s dual narrative, in turn expanding her capabilities as an actress, even if the character’s crippling emotionality doesn’t feel as thoroughly palpable, as a result of the movie’s impatient screenplay constantly deviating away from her during her gravest tribulations. In addition to this, I found the look and design of this killer to effectively muster an intimidating presence during moments when the camera focuses intently on him, with James Preston Rogers’ hulkingly astonishing physique giving him a defining physical advantage over everyone that he comes into direct contact with. James dons a leather domination mask and jeans, which doesn’t exactly breed originality to his conceptual design, but there’s no limiting the level of influence that he has to any scene or sequence that he accompanies, and considering his size is utilized to enhance the destructive magnitude of the character’s punishing tendencies, it vividly brought back memories of my love for Jason Voorhees, or even Rob Zombie’s version of Michael Myers, in terms of their physical prowess, making an already mentally unstable adversary all the more dangerous for his uncanny ability to move in and out of every environment, despite his immense size and stature. Lastly, while there’s no denying that Psycho Killer is a creative and tonal mess, I can at least say the closest that it finds to stabilization lies within Magnus Jonck’s transfixingly hypnotic cinematography, not only towards the iconography of Rogers’ aforementioned antagonist, but also some slick motions of the lens during kills that highlighted some choreography to the candid rapidness of the depiction, in turn cementing big screen appeal in the depths of the movie’s presentation. Jonck is undoubtedly aided by some ultraviolet lighting schemes that atmospherically conjure a restless influence for the killer that persists long after he’s left the depicted environment, feeling like this airborne toxin that spreads across the country like a plague, and considering this is Polone’s debut directorial effort, he leans heavily on Jonck’s imagery to revel in the dread and despair of this sinister underbelly deriving so much satanic panic, emanating the single most integral aspect in this movie’s favor.

NEGATIVES

It’s never for a good reason why a movie sits on the unfinished shelf of post-production for over three years, and in having watched Psycho Killer, I can now say that it’s a gruesomely grotesque victim of the hack and slash mentality that unfortunately comes with big name studios imposing their will towards a movie’s finished product, leaving the movie feeling like a tale of two halves, the likes of which one is infinitely worse than the other. This is especially tragic for Andrew Kevin Walker, who thirty years ago was responsible for one of the greatest thrillers of all-time in Se7en, but now finds himself deduced to a shell of a once prosperous screenwriter, not only in settling for the lowest of hanging fruit in conjuring a satanically evil background to his antagonist, with the kind of explorative depth of a Hot Topic storefront, but also such thinly written characterization that takes a conflict that initially feels so personal with vengeance, and wastes it away with an abundance of bizarre creative decisions that kill this movie directly on arrival. For some strange reason, Walker opts to focus on the killer every bit as much as Jane, in turn wiping away any shred of mystique from the former, while not establishing enough connective depth in the latter, and aside from keeping its audience at a grave distance from these characters, which never allows us to invest in them as compelling entities driving the movie’s storytelling, it constantly feels overwhelmed by the trajectory of its conventional outline to maintain both sides narrating through the same section of the screenplay, with the most obvious spoon-fed exposition of overhead narration from news briefings or radio programming summoning the most random of histories to coincide with the set piece that we’re about to experience. Such an example exists within this bizarre set piece involving Three Mile Island, of all places, and with a DJ summarizing everything that we are to understand about this location, as well as the killer’s connection to it, it wipes away any semblance of subtlety or interpretive opportunity to the capability of the audience, making it feel like the kind of movie that you could play on mute and still feel like you’re in-tune with what’s transpiring, on account of how obvious the dialogue and exposition processes everything out. If there’s any semblance of mystique left in our killer by this point, it’s sacrificed in the decision to utilize a Batman-like vocal range to his character, producing unintentional laughter by the dozens within meditated responses that feel like a child’s idea to what evil should effectively sound like. Walker isn’t alone in the movie’s outburst hilarity of its detracting factors, however, as Palone’s debut in the director’s chair is a steaming pile of dung that doesn’t even remain true to the confines of its own genre enveloping, taking this once psychological thriller during the opening half, and transforming it strangely to feel like an action movie during its riveting climax. This is where the studio influence feels most transparent to the movie’s integrity, specifically with this immense set piece that quite literally comes out of nowhere, making this feel like a Jean Claude Van-Damme movie in atmospheric ambiance or in the bombastically urgent overhead tones of Sven Faulconer’s once eerily unsettling score. Though Palone’s inexperience certainly plays a contributing factor in the movie’s inability to find a comfortable rhythm of consistency throughout its 87-minute duration, the clumsy helming of its editing techniques are undoubtedly the single biggest detractor towards remaining faithfully invested throughout this narrative, summoning strangely stacked sequencing that leads to a variety of continuity errors and geographic restrictions that make it feel like Jane is literally teleporting across the states. Such an example exists with Jane being bloodily beaten and thrown out of a motel window, during one of her many frequent interactions with this supposedly impossible killer to find, only in the very next image after the cut to show her peacefully sifting through briefs, without any semblance of stakes or consequences stemming from this near-death confrontation that should at least leave her checked out by a medic. While it’s undoubtedly clear that a bigger cut of this movie exists with so much of the transitioning feeling like it’s missing vital pieces to naturally flesh out everything that transpires, what we’re ultimately left with is this abrasive level of storytelling that leaves the magnitude of this cross-country investigation feeling so bafflingly easy that it feels like any law authority could’ve capably solved it, in turn magnifying much of the aforementioned limitations in characterization that never allows Jane the character to stand out with any level of supernatural intelligence or instinctual intuition to her investigative advantage. Finally, even the carnage candy is executed with a level of incompetence that gave me no semblance of much-needed energy or enticement to carry over from kill to kill, without any semblance of creativity or construct to prove that any legitimate effort was utilized to flesh out their devastation. I make that brave assessment because even when the movie is attempting to be gruesome with gore, emanated from these abrupt contortions of blades or gunfire, they’re enacted with the worst kind of C.G blood that not only disappears in the air of some slow motion sequences, but also impressively never land anywhere on the skin of any of its characters involved in the conflict, and while even the worst horror movies typically contain one impressive kill to their ambitious outpouring, none of those elicited from Psycho Killer ever came close to even remotely impressing me, proving that this movie can’t even be enjoyed individually, let alone in the sum of its parts.

OVERALL
Psycho Killer is an abysmally dull and atmospherically vapid once a year misfire that depicts much more of the three-year struggles of its off-screen production woes, rather than developing a suspensefully compelling narrative on-screen. Between wasting away a merited opportunity for Georgina Campbell, as well as some stunningly stylistic shots displayed throughout, the film is a bafflingly disorganized plunder that sinks immediately under the weight of its many bizarre creative choices, with not enough fun to feel campily digestible, nor enough originality to make us wonder what might have been

My Grade: 2.7 or F