Review of The Killer Inside Me (2010) by Kenneth R — 01 Jan 2011

The gruesome violence is not irresponsibly done precisely because it's horrifying from either male or female POV... but it's flawed by the film's underwritten female roles that never convince. At best, they seek some material safety and blind romance a la Rita on Dexter... but even that shallowest, most damaged Dexter character is complex in comparison to these hapless female leads. Their spiritual pain and desperation the movie isn't made enough of in order to explain why they want what they do. Their relationship with their killer boyfriend is "fleshed out" I suppose, in that the only interaction they have with him is physical, sexual...

I guess this film is more from his POV than others. He is narrating after all. And he tries to explain himself to us but sociopaths don't make for the most eloquent storytellers. We see through him through and through.

I quite like an editing sequence towards the end that basically reveals the idea of a serial killer motivated by a traumatic life experience to be an exaggeration to lesser or greater degrees. Maybe they were indeed motivated... once. But repeat killers over years of time don't just have issues, they lack some emotional part that would hold them together as a human being. The rest of the film is masterfully shot but has some sketchy scenes, lines of dialogue, et cetera, and that hurts when the movie sets out to be an intimate drama.

Similar to Memento, there's ultimately not much here at the heart of all the confusion. But, of course, that's the disappointing point. It's not wrong but it also makes the movie incapable of reaching me deeply -- Dexter may not be realistic but I feel for him... and his "eviler" brother for that matter because they're complicated, have ideas. This killer is just a thing -- it's like The Terminator if the killing machine narrated the story... which makes it more like A Clockwork Orange and only a little less mechanical. Still, the movie mostly works on its own terms.

If only it had made more effort to explain what the women see in this creep (as Mary Harron's American Psycho did more successfully by identifying more with the women than its madman), then I could be more supportive of the work here as a whole. Also, I must add, wether the movie is in a small town or city setting, both portrayed dully here, making a point about how imagination transforms the world... and how the architecture of capitalist cities are as soulless and bland as this killer. But the movie's view of these settings is distant... making for a film that feels strangely disinterested, even in its own existence.