By JUSTIN MCDEVITT

If you had told me there was a movie out there starring the stunning Carol Kane in which she plays a disgruntled office worker who embarks on a gleeful murder spree after getting the worst news in the world – that she would have to start working from home part time – I would have laughed directly in your face. Mostly because in the past two years (or ten, depending on how emotional math works), we have collectively learned that working from home = good. Working from home = no murder spree. So the plot of the film today would be as follows: disgruntled office worker learns she has to come back to the office five days a week and embarks on a gleeful murder spree. Everyone would watch, filled with understanding, cheering her on. “Well they shouldn’t have made her come back into the office,” we’d say. “Why, that’s not even murder at all, not really. That’s justice!”

This week I’m dishing on photographic artist Cindy Sherman’s sole directorial feature, OFFICE KILLER. Starring Carol Kane (When A Stranger Calls), Molly Ringwald (sure we can list her credits, but what she really deserves recognition for is bringing Philipe Besson’s perfect gay novel Lie With Me to the States, praise be Molly), and Jeanne Tripplehorn (Big Love, Basic Instinct). At just over eighty minutes, OFFICE KILLER is the perfect length and does not seek to waste any of your precious time.

Dorine Douglas (Kane) is a hapless frump of a copyeditor (and yes I do feel seen) working for a struggling magazine. She is not unlike her character in Jawbreaker and therefore I believe these films exist in the same universe. Prove me wrong. Go ahead. Anyway, Dorine loves her job even though no one seems to like her or know her name. When she learns budget cuts will take her out of the office part time, forcing her to spend more time at home with her invalid mother (Alice Drummond), she starts killing everyone in the office. Her descent into madness is a slow burn. In fact, the first death is an accident: a pesky desktop computer electrocutes her coworker (David Thornton) to death, and she decides to hang up on 911 and steal the body instead. Love that for you, Dorine.

As she lugs the corpse out of the office, I mistakenly thought she was going to bury it somewhere or dump it in a river. Wrong! Dorine decides to take the body home with her… because if she has to work from home, dammit she’ll bring the whole office home too! It’s cheeky. It’s bananas. And I love it. The way Dorine hides these bodies in the basement reminds me of just what a performative little bitch Michael Meyers is. He never gets credit for his art installations: Flashlight-in-Head 2018 or Attic-of-Broken-Dreams 1989. All people want to talk about is his white mask and the way he walks-not-runs to do his murders, but Mikey loves a set design moment. The tombstone at the head of the bed with Annie sprawled out before it is *chef’s kiss*. Laurie should have at least taken a moment to appreciate Michael’s keen eye for design before hijacking the series for herself. Alas.

As the bodies accumulate, Norah (Tripplehorn), the office finance person, takes a shine to Dorine, while Kim (Ringwald), a writer and the “office bitch” (we are taught she is a “bitch” because she smokes cigarettes and scowls), seems seriously suspicious of Dorine. Through flashbacks we learn Dorine may or may not have definitely engineered her father’s untimely death, so yes you could say she’s always had a healthy taste for blood. What adds to the comedy part of this horror comedy is Dorine’s presentation of incompetence. Oh, it couldn’t possibly be Dorine because Dorine is too pathetic with her sad beige clothes and her Mrs. Doubtfire orthopedic shoes. She is too ineffectual to be a threat. She gives you a bit of Carrie White, and just like Carrie, I’m rooting for her; we are all rooting for her.

We should take a moment to discuss just what constitutes a horror comedy, because it is a sub-genre that annoys me terribly. This movie is ironic, sure. It takes office politics and literally kills them. So yes, the premise has a comedic element, but the film itself is very sleek and chic, what I’d like to dub “Office Noir” if you’ll let me. But it is not a comedy, not equally in terms of its horror. Theater of Blood is not a comedy, but its premise is hilarious. The same for the Dr. Phibes series and the Sleepaway Camp sequels. And yet some would put them in the horror comedy camp. That bothers me. Scream has some funny moments but I would never have the audacity to call it a comedy. When I went to see the Scream 25th anniversary in theaters, my roommate laughed at a moment I did not deem a laugh line and therefore I was furious at her for the whole rest of the movie (but I did not tell her, so if you’re reading this Ri, cool, thanks for reading my column). To call something a horror comedy suggests a balance of the two. But a scary movie can be funny without being a comedy – just look at my life!

In addition to the work-from-home-as-punishment hilarity, OFFICE KILLER also makes another comment on office politics: the office cold is really fucking gross. Everyone in the office except for Dorine has the same cold. They keep passing it to each other which is partly how you learn Kim is sleeping with Gary (Thornton), so the cold becomes, in a disgusting way, a badge of sex honor. Of course Dorine kills all these people! If she didn’t, they’d probably kill her with all their dumb germs. Separate from her office murders, Dorine does away with two Girl Scouts who show up at her house selling cookies. The death happens off screen, and we don’t actually find out she’s done them in until much later when their bodies are revealed to be downstairs with the others. It’s probably my favorite part of the whole movie because it went there. Why pay Girl Scouts for cookies when you can do murders to them and keep all the Tagalongs and Thin Mints for yourself?

Dorine says, “When you’re quiet, people think you’re strange,” and she’s right. The fact that she is a murderess is totally incidental to the fact that the people working in this office are narrow minded bullies who can’t get over high school hierarchies. All Dorine wants to do is her job. “It’s like her whole life revolves around her work,” says one critic. The lens of this movie is so fascinating (i.e. skewed), but it helps you root for Dorine and does make me wonder if she would get along with Dwight and Angela from The Office, or if even they would say, “No, she goes too far, that one.”

Final Thoughts: I loved this movie. But it’s not a comedy, and it’s not a horror comedy! It’s not camp, either. It’s simply a horror movie with a humorous premise. And that’s okay! Not everything has to be camp. Dorine escapes at the end of the movie, and we see her circle a job opening for an office manager. Where is the sequel? I’d love to see how Dorine adapts to the changing norms of office politics. Would she be an advocate for the #MeToo movement? Would she wear a mask or take to Facebook to pester people to do their own “research?” Would she start a weight-loss church in Tennessee? It’s been twenty-four years but I don’t think Dorine has stopped her killing spree, and I’d love to see who she offs next.

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