Courtney Howard // Film Critic
PSYCHO KILLER
Rated R, 1 hour and 32 minutes
Directed by: Gavin Polone
Starring: Georgina Campbell, James Preston Rogers, Malcolm McDowell, Logan Miller, Grace Dove, Nigel Shawn Williams, Stephen Adekolu
It should be absurdly funny to see a group of try-hard Satanists sitting around a table in a wealthy benefactor’s mansion scarfing down Chinese takeout and plotting to take over the world. It should be. PSYCHO KILLER squanders that potential. Director Gavin Polone and writer Andrew Kevin Walker can’t handle high camp, nor can they handle building a visceral sense of urgency, dread or fear in their second cinematic venture together (8MM was their first, with Polone in a producorial role).
In what’s best dubbed “Go Girl Give Us Nothing: The Movie,” Polone and Walker’s CGI-blood-laced thriller is centered on a cop out to kill the deranged, rampaging serial killer who murdered her husband. What should’ve been a promising vehicle for a rising star, with its decent albeit familiar premise, is turned into an abysmally dull, disorganized feature by these filmmakers, littered with lazy, rudimentary and baffling creative choices. The narrative’s impending killer force is blunted and so is any enthusiasm surrounding the kills.
Kansas State Trooper Jane Archer (Georgina Campbell) is headed home from work when she witnesses a psychopath (James Preston Rogers) shoot her State Trooper husband Michael (Stephen Adekolu) while on a routine roadside stop. In the days after, she’s haunted by the traumatic scenario replaying over and over in her head, rethinking what she could’ve done better. She suspects that the mystery man who did it is the elusive serial killer known in the media as The Satanic Slasher, who wears a radioactive mask and paints pentagrams in blood. Against advice from her department and caring, concerned father (Nigel Shawn Williams), she launches her own investigation, taking a leave of absence and hitting the road.
The murderous, masked marauder has been traveling cross-country, committing crimes like robbing pharmacies, stealing library books and leaving a trail of mutilated bodies behind. Jane’s journey takes her through unfamiliar territory as she navigates interstate freeways and sexism from federal bureaus out to deliberately impede her progress. She figures out he’s been staying in motels under the name of an allegedly dead prisoner – a mass murdering Satanic cultist. It’s through her own moxie and the help of one sympathetic female agent (Grace Dove) that she gets close enough to her tormentor to start piecing together his sinister agenda, which is darker than she could have ever imagined.
For what begins as an 80s throwback, Satanic Panic picture with B-movie grade grit and a Clarice Starling-esque heroine quickly devolves into a lackluster endeavor filled with poorly drawn characters, ridiculously stupid scenarios, and no innovative twists. Bad ADR also plagues the proceedings. The unrelenting nature of the titular antagonist’s mission never looks nor feels scary or even remotely threatening. His victims – like the pharmacist who somehow can’t see her killer’s ginormous 6’6” frame in her small sedan’s back seat, or the acid-tripping spoiled Satanists who don’t panic when he enters the room clearly wielding an axe – are all morons. Madness and mayhem are strangely constrained, primarily relegated to weightless CG-assisted blood splatters. That said, the death of the cult’s moneyed, monologue-ing Mr. Pendleton (Malcolm McDowell) would probably make Gallagher proud.
While the lone tension release joke is indeed funny, comedic relief on the whole isn’t well-executed and, disappointingly, is used to pad out the proceedings. The Catholic Priest’s kill has an underplayed gross-out element to it. Psycho Killer’s stay at Mr. Pendleton’s mansion where he shares ODD COUPLE-ish chemistry with Marvin (Logan Miller) fails to percolate. None of the tertiary supporting players are given personalities to amp up any satirical bent Walker might’ve been stoking with their inclusion.
Worse, the filmmakers do their leading lady a major disservice by not gifting Campbell with any movie star moments to spotlight her worth as she did so craftily in BARBARIAN and no nuanced subtleties in the subpar material to dig into. She does the best she can with what’s afforded her though. Jane’s battles against out-of-state departmental bias and misogyny are text, not subtext. Her protagonist’s defining feature is her dead husband and her arc is exclusively gifted to her by another man. There’s surprisingly no room for much internality within the character to materialize. Any internal conflict Jane grapples with is rushed through in a 3 minute scene where she finds out she’s pregnant. Weirdly, when tossed through a glass motel window a few scenes later, she doesn’t pay her delicate condition any further mind.
Polone struggles trying build tension. Perhaps, as the evidence clearly shows, this genre just isn’t his forte. He forgets to have fun with the gnarlier, darker aspects of Walker’s narrative and completely disregards any thematic resonance whatsoever. Plus, it’s also shocking that Walker, who previously delivered an all-timer serial killer film with SE7EN can’t remotely recapture that creepy, unnerving magic again. His sauce is all filler and no killer.
Grade: D-
PSYCHO KILLER opens in theaters on February 20.
