By MICHAEL GINGOLD
Starring Georgina Campbell, James Preston Rogers and Malcolm McDowell
Directed by Gavin Polone
Written by Andrew Kevin Walker
20th Century Studios
The saga of PSYCHO KILLER’s long and winding road to the screen might make a more compelling movie than PSYCHO KILLER itself. The screenplay by SE7EN’s Andrew Kevin Walker dates back two decades, and was first going to go before the cameras in 2009 with Fred Durst, of all people, at the helm. He was replaced the following year by Gavin Polone, a producer with credits including the Walker-scripted 8MM, making his feature directorial debut, and Eli Roth as part of the producing team. The movie finally lensed under Polone in 2023, got its R rating in April 2024 and has been on the shelf since then, until its release this weekend with no critics’ screenings.
The last time a serial-murder movie had this tortuous a path to the screen was the lamentable SOLACE (which at one point, coincidentally, was posited as a SE7EN sequel). PSYCHO KILLER at least has a promising start, set on a lonely, wintry road in Kansas where a traffic stop leads to a violent murder. The victim is the husband of policewoman Jane Archer (Georgina Campbell), who makes it her mission to track down the hulking, masked villain responsible (James Preston Rogers). Known as “The Satanic Slasher” on screen and “Psycho Killer” in the credits, he has already taken 15 other lives. Polone gives that opening setpiece a spare, subdued tone that befits and enhances the scene. It is not so appropriate later when the movie takes us into a mansion where a devil-cult leader played by Malcolm McDowell and his acolytes are feasting on Chinese takeout by candlelight…but I’m getting ahead of myself.
The apparent goal with PSYCHO KILLER was to juxtapose and contrast a protagonist and antagonist on simultaneous, relentless missions: the Slasher on his murder spree with an endgame that’s gradually revealed, and Jane’s singleminded pursuit of vengeance. Unfortunately, after some opening-act discussion of Jane’s PTSD and the potential cost of her quest, she’s given very little emotional depth or conflict from then on, and an early revelation about her that should have been pivotal goes almost completely unaddressed thereafter. Not to mention that despite the ongoing multistate FBI/police manhunt for the Slasher, Jane is somehow able to deduce his whereabouts and next moves when no one else in law enforcement apparently can. (But then, she does have a search engine that, when the term “open the gates” is entered—without quotes—the very first results are links about a black-metal band that provide a vital clue.)
Meanwhile, the Slasher is a bit too only-in-the-movies for the down-and-gritty story Polone and Walker are trying to tell, with his scary-movie mask and a voice like THE ROAD WARRIOR’s Humungus. His m.o. involving newspaper classified ads seems a little out-of-date—a reference to a certain anniversary places the action in 2017—which shows the project’s age. And the longer the movie goes on, the loopier the plotting becomes, though it’s all approached with that same straight-faced seriousness. By the time it arrives at that Satanist HQ, it almost plays like a spoof of the devil-cult-murder genre, complete with copious and obvious CG gore.
And then it takes another step for its final act that leaves you wondering if Walker’s script was somehow switched with another one during production. The lengthy finale is completely out of proportion and emphasis with what has gone before, and you’re left wondering, how did the stark little thriller we started with get to this point? It’s a shame, too, because there are moments where it’s clear Polone put some thought into his presentation; he has a good eye for lonely rural locations, and I liked the way he has people frequently driving or cycling past the murder sites, not realizing the carnage that is going on or has just gone on nearby. But a closing credit for additional editing by genre specialist/SAW franchise veteran Kevin Greutert bespeaks a film that went through extensive postproduction travails, and wound up shorn of dramatic nuance and sense. It all winds up with a closing bit that’s just another head-scratcher, once again hinting at a plot concept that is otherwise nowhere to be seen elsewhere in the movie.
