Review of The Killer Inside Me (2010) by James F — 03 Oct 2010

The Killer Inside Me tells the tale of Sherriff?s deputy Lou Ford (Casey Affleck), a respectable and upstanding member of the community, Ford is hiding a secret. Beneath the dull, quiet veneer, he?s actually an emotionally dead, raging sociopath with a taste for sado-masicism and murder. Every kill he makes is carefully thought through with a dark and disturbing clarity.

Through a series of flashbacks, we discover that Lou had this ?sickness? when he was a child. He quietly hides these feelings away after his brother goes to prison to cover up for a an attack on a child Lou committed, it?s when he starts an affair with a prostitute (Jessica Alba) that these psychotic tendencies reappear. With a double murder spiralling into several more, each one is a vain attempt to cover the trail linking it to the last.

There?s a real feel of noir to the movie, but whilst dark and murky, it never lives up to the promise at the start. Why that is, is difficult to pinpoint....the graphic beating of a woman, seen when Lou kills his first victim, doesn?t really add anything to the movie and after such a frantic scene, the film never really seems to pick up from there. The main character floats along with little direction or purpose andas a viewer, I felt very detached from what was going on both on the screen and inside his head?..he really is just a messed up and nasty little fucker.

Both Afflec and Alba give strong performances but somehow the film just fails to reach any kind of real height. Overall, its well worth checking out but probably not a film that deserves any kind of repeated viewing?..