The Killer Inside Me

Reviewed by Steve Kochems

Gratuitous violence is not something that is of particular interest to me. Seeing people mangled or beaten just isn't the type of entertainment that I'm looking for. But when I saw the first trailer for this film, I've got to say I was quite interested. It didn't hurt that Stanley Kubrick had called it "probably the most chilling and believable first-person story of a criminally warped mind I have ever encountered." It's cast also drew me in; Casey Affleck gets to shine again with a psychologically troubled character, teetering on a border of gentleman and sociopath (much like in the Assassination of Jesse James). I also felt it might give an opportunity for both Kate Hudson and Jessica Alba to play characters with range, i.e. not a romantic comedy. All these things had me fairly excited to see this film, but then I watched it.

Now, I had thought I'd seen just about as brutal a film as one can witness with the 2002 French film Irreversible. I was quite surprised at how close The Killer Inside Me comes to that level and it really is unfortunate. Lou Ford is certainly a disturbing young man (again, the perfectly cast Affleck) who we follow on a trail of, well, unnecessarily horrific acts. The film opens with him trying to run a whore out of town, played by Alba, but when the she fights back and starts to hit him, we can see Ford's patience erode each time she slaps him. Finally he fights back and whips her (mind you this is only the beginning of how graphic this film gets, but this should be the only time i mention it specifically). Afterward, he apologizes and returns to his gentlemanly ways, but Alba tells him she liked it. This not so much triggers something in his character as reveals it to the audience (which we later see has stemmed deeper through his flashbacks) how truly fucked up this guy is.

Through the course of the film, it seemed his pleasure was not masochistic but rather out of some necessity to him. He didn't enjoy the pain in killing his loved ones but took some sort of pleasure out dominating the women in the film. All the men he kills seem to be only to avoid consequence, not to mention the fashion in which he executes (hehe, get it?) these murders.

My distaste for this movie is completely separate from the quality of the film itself. Affleck is spot on again, and the rest of the cast fill their roles well, especially a late entry by Bill Pullman. The cinematography is excellent also, it had the look and feel of Jim Thompson's novel, and I'm certainly interested to see more work by director Michael Winterbottom. But overall it's just simply too graphic and doesn't really try to disguise anything. What Winterbottom gains out of this is a raw and realistic feel the film has, but I suppose then it feels too raw and real for my liking. I simply wouldn't be able to stomach it over a meal. The pacing, casting, script, and directing are all in place, but the subject matter is simply too graphic, which may not be the case with some of you.

Overall, I'd have to say I'm a little disappointed. All the parts that I had high hopes for were in place and well executed, but I just couldn't stomach the violence. Maybe I ate some bad seafood, who knows. If you like that sort of thing, then this is certainly a movie for you. If I take nothing else away from it, The Killer Inside Me works as an excellent character piece, much like Kubrick said, and really reveals a lot about human nature and masculinity to some extent, but that's for another conversation.


3 out of 5