When Michael Winterbottom’s The Killer Inside Me premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January, one of the film’s stars, Jessica Alba (Fantastic Four), reportedly walked out of the cinema half way through the screening. But who can blame her? This grim look into the psyche of a serial killer is so sadistically violent in parts, its borderline torture porn. As far as crime thrillers go, it’s also quite a bore.

The film marks the second failed attempt to adapt the controversial yet acclaimed 1952 novel by American crime author Jim Thompson, proof that some great pieces of literature just don’t belong on the big screen. The story follows Lou Ford (Casey Affleck; Gone Baby Gone), a well-mannered and respected Deputy Sheriff in a small Texas township.  Or so he appears. Lou’s deep-rooted psychopathic tendencies take over while cheating on his loving girlfriend Amy (Kate Hudson; Bride Wars) with a prostitute named Joyce (Jessica Alba, reminding us she can do dramatic acting). What begins as sado-sexual affair turns deadly when Lou ‘snaps’ and commits a twin murder, arranging the bodies so that it appears as though the victims killed each other. He initially has the town fooled, but a hotshot city attorney (Simon Baker; TV’s The Mentalist) holds Lou in suspicion and is determined to find evidence that will bring him to justice.

The setup certainly holds intrigue – I usually lap up dark and confronting crime stories like this — but Winterbottom’s detached direction and Jim Curran’s patchy screenplay leaves the audience out in the cold. First off, it’s imperative in a film about getting away with murder that you actually believe they get away with murder. Obviously, this isn’t easy. Many films fall apart at a narrative level due to glaring plot holes, farfetched conveniences and silly character judgments. The Killer Inside Me has all three. For instance, when someone is gruesomely bashed to death, the perpetrator is sure to have some visible bruising and cuts on his hands — if not broken fingers — that would be an obvious giveaway.  Not according to this film. This might seem like a petty critique, but when the source material takes itself this earnestly, it needs to be convincing if it wants to be compelling.

Casey Affleck’s understated performance attempts to unnerve with subtle intimations of the monster within, yet he doesn’t quite capture that burning inner anger, nor possess enough charisma an antagonist needs to win us over. John Curran’s screenplay is also at fault, revealing frustratingly little about Lou’s thoughts and motivations for murder. Never underestimate the power of the personal pronoun ‘I’; without being placed in the first person like the reader is in Thompson’s novel, we never truly get to know the killer within.

The Killer Inside Me shares the brutality of No Country For Old Men, but lacks the suspense. It depicts a similar decent into madness as American Psycho, but is without the compelling characterisation of its criminal lead. It’s clear Winterbottom (Genova, 9 Songs) set out to make an unnerving and provocative crime drama, one he hoped would linger in the back of the mind after leaving the cinema. It’s provocative all right, but purely because of the lurid depictions of violence. Emotionally, the film doesn’t register. We care little for those onscreen, causing the rather baffling conclusion to arrive as a moment of relief, rather than a moment of contemplation.

– This review was originally published on July 16th, 2010.

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