May 21, 2011
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The Killer Inside Me Reviews
The Killer Inside Me
- KILLER INSIDE ME, THE (DVD MOVIE)
Oscar-nominated actor Casey Affleck (Gone Baby Gone) gives his most chilling performance yet in the controversial crime drama The Killer Inside Me. Co-starring Jessica Alba (Fantastic Four), Oscar nominee Kate Hudson (Almost Famous), Emmy nominee Simon Baker (TV s The Mentalist) and Bill Pullman (Independence Day), this modern-day film noir shows a small town sheriff up to his neck in murders: his own. When Affleck s sheriff is asked to railroad a talkative prostitute out of town before she make
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Beating New Life Into A Thompson Classic–“Killer” Pulls No Punches,
Bringing pulp novelist Jim Thompson to screen has always been a tricky proposition. His dark stories are easy to push over the edge of sanity. With their undercurrent of brutality, they can walk the line of comedy and/or surrealism but still maintain a realistic punch to the jaw. Getting that tone has been hit or miss in cinema–personal favorites are the sublime “The Grifters,” “Coup de Torchon” and the underrated “After Dark, My Sweet.” I was stoked to hear director Michael Winterbottom had taken on “The Killer Inside Me” which had been covered poorly in an earlier production featuring Stacy Keach.
Winterbottom has assembled an impressive cast including Casey Affleck, Jessica Alba, Ned Beatty, and Kate Hudson for this neo-noir piece. Affleck stars as a low-keyed and likable law enforcement officer who gets involved with a local prostitute and enmeshed in a murderous scheme. But to cover his tracks, further bad deeds need to be done–and Affeck seems to relish this new evil! It’s best not to go into the specifics of the plot and to let the film unfold, but Winterbottom does not shy away from some explicit and surprising violence. It’s unsettling, to say the least, but helps to establish an effective “anything can happen” feel!
Ultimately the success of “The Killer Inside Me” rests on Casey Affleck’s shoulders. He is not the conventional actor one would picture for this role. Small in stature, relaxed in delivery (and enunciation)–his offbeat presence actually makes “The Killer Inside Me” even more intriguing. As he is not a predictable “leading man” or a particularly menacing presence, you’re never quite sure what he’s going to do. I found this lack of expectation to be quite invigorating and led me to accept and appreciate the twists of the film to a greater degree. To be fair, the film does get loopier and loopier–but I was happy to follow this sordid tale through to the completely over-the-top finale! KGHarris, 8/10.
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|An Analysis that Differs Significantly from other Reviewers…..,
For those who have not seen the movie, please read other reviews for plot synopses and be advised that the violence depicted is so graphic and realistic that no immature person should be allowed to view it. For mature viewers, the plot and dialog are reminiscent of Cormack McCarthy’s work (i.e. Child of God) in which the psyche of a deranged, perverted lunatic is presented so dispassionately that you actually develop some (albeit minor) affection for him. It is a significant movie and definitely worth watching.
SPOILER ALERT: My review is for those who have seen the movie and are puzzled or disappointed by portions of it, primarily the ending. For ease of recognition, I will use the actor’s names, rather than their character names.
Casey’s mother died when he was quite young and he was introduced to sadomasochistic sex by a baby sitter. As a result, he begins molesting girls much younger than himself and is caught in the act by his adopted older brother, who is revolted by his behavior. Subsequently, when knowledge of Casey’s crimes become wide spread, his innocent brother, being older, is punished while he is not. When the brother returns (from jail?) he begins working on a construction crew and is killed through the negligence of construction magnate, Ned Beatty. All of this is sublimated within Casey’s mind until the nightmare is awakened when prostitute, Jessica Alba, slaps him. She “becomes” the baby sitter and they rekindle the violent SM relationship from his past, but now Casey is a grown man and capable of handing out a much greater, escalating, level of violence.
Casey beats Jessica to death in order to conceal the murder of Beatty’s son and thus avenge his step-brother’s death. He is also symbolically punishing/destroying the source of his torment and pathology, the baby sitter whom Jessica has come to represent. His youthful experiences have rendered him a psychopath, devoid of conscience, and he is fixated upon immediate, personal whims, without concern for others. Violent murder is a logical progression in his awakened and rapidly escalating sadomasochistic fury. Watch how he covers the faces of both Jessica and Kate during sex, which is generally from behind, so he cannot see their faces. Is it so he can imagine that they are the baby sitter, or perhaps the child-victims of his youth? It’s obvious that, in his mind, they represent other people and their faces contradict his mental images.
I believe from this point forward, Casey descends into utter madness and his actions have no logic but to his own twisted psyche. His murder of Kate serves no purpose, because the “purposes” of an insane person are inscrutable. As with the prostitute, he and Kate have engaged in an escalating sadomasochistic sexual relationship and he probably realizes that marriage is not a desirable situation for him, so he simply ends it with a level of violence and detachment that are both shocking and entirely predictable. You don’t talk your way out of an engagement to an annoying ‘fly’, you simply swat it….and then find a fall guy to take the blame.
Now here is where I strongly differ with all other reviewers….the ending. Casey is caught and sent to an asylum, where he whiles away the hours in his cell supposedly watching a strange slide show of pictures of his victims. We are effectively told the slide show is imaginary by the reaction of the nurse when he asks her to slow down the progression of pictures. Watch her reaction. This is a critical and widely overlooked point: the slide show is entirely imaginary, as is everything from that point on. He is not “saved” from the asylum by Bill Pullman (which excuses his otherwise preposterous bellowing), and he does not really return home to plot and execute the destruction of all his adversaries. Jessica is dead. She does not walk into his house and verify her “undying” love, and his tormentors (inexplicably unaware of the gasoline-soaked house) are not all neatly incinerated. This is all a product of Casey’s twisted imagination….a glorious, fiery ending rather than the grim reality that his future was really to be spent watching an endless, imaginary slide show on the wall of his dingy madhouse cell. The ending rubs people wrong because it defies ‘normal’ logic. It is, however, a preposterously, insanely perfect ending when you consider where it actually occurred….in the mind of a psychopath.
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|The Killer Inside Me,
This noir thriller of a movie is very realistic especially when it transforms from book to film, in many areas. It is a great screenplay and an outstanding job of acting by Casey Affleck, who by whatever means, truly deserves the 2010 Academy Award nomination and win for Best Actor. I not going into detail regarding the movie for those that have not seen this sleeper gem of a flick. Of course, there will be a great number of people that do not like the way the book was transformed to the big screen, especially when it comes to the film’s horribly predictable ending. This film is not for the faint of heart [or the squeamish] – the brutality of the film conveys the rage of “The Killer Inside Me.” But, with all of today’s films that attempt to be exciting by regimented placement of gratuitous violence and gore, that is where “The Killer Inside Me” truly shines. We actually want to see more – more beatings, more blood, more bruises and more bodily fluids seeping out of the half breathing bodies, the soon-to-be ex-friends of sociopath Lou Ford. The remainder of the ensemble cast is also very believable with their brief onscreen supporting roles. Jessica Alba and Kate Hudson are just sublime as Lou’s love interests, that is, if Lou could really and truly love someone at all. Lou doesn’t even love himself.
Filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, who worked with Thompson on the script for the 1956 movie “The Killing,” praised the novel, stating that it was “probably the most chilling and believable first-person story of a criminally warped mind I have ever encountered.”
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