Killer Me (2001)

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Posted on Apr 28, 2004 under Horror |

Written, produced, and directed by Zachary Hansen
Starring
- George Foster
- Christina Kew
- Kirk B.R. Woller
- Garth Wilton
- Ken Gruz

I’ll tell you something that I wish I had known going into this movie:

Killer Me is not a serial killer movie.

The serial killer movie is the flipside to the much-ballyhooed slasher flick revival of recent years. Whereas the neo-slasher flicks are winking, smug, and self-referential, the recent crop of serial killer movies are the “inside the madman’s mind” movies that take a deep and ponderous look at the human being who commits horrendous murders. The lion’s share of these have been based on true stories, and you can usually identify them easily enough on the video store shelves: the cover shows a close-up of the killer’s (actor’s) face with off-kilter lighting, and the title is simply the killer’s last name: Dahmer or Bundy or Gacy¹ or Speck or Baumgartner-MacReedy or what have you.

“Hmmm… Broiled or fried?”

There also those movies which are about wholly fictional serial killers (allowing for more artistic license, or at least more legitimate artistic license than the pseudo-biopics). And that’s what Killer Me appears to be, from its title to its close-up cover to the straight razor featured prominently on the back cover.

But that’s not what it is.

Joe (George Foster) is probably the nicest homicidal maniac you’ll ever meet. He’s taciturn, retiring, kind to animals and children (he’s managed to keep a goldfish alive for four years — that oughtta tell you something). But he finds himself a slave to his demons, and to his rage at exhibitions of helplessness and cruelty. Why, when he sees the fellow in the apartment across the alley beat his significant other, he starts shaking with anger. Next thing you know, he’s waking up from a fugue state with blood on his hands, and disturbing visions of the night before only come back to him in bits and pieces throughout the day. (You may think that killing an abuser makes him a hero. Yeah, it probably would, except he killed the woman too. Guess he got carried away.)

By day, Joe’s a student and part-time librarian at the Great Nameless University, studying criminology. In a few of his classes, his eyes make contact with those of fellow student Anna (Christina Kew) in that way that always happens in movies and never in real life, that says that their lives are going to be intertwined until the closing credits. Anna’s a fragile girl away from home for the first time since the death of her mother, desperately seeking something or someone to cling to, and solid Joe looks like a good bet.

Petit Guignol.

Of course, the problem here is that you’ve got two internalized characters with thick shells, hesitantly emerging for human contact with each other. Not really gripping cinema, I’ve got to tell you. They go to dinner. He talks about his goldfish. She talks about her hamster that died. He goes to the men’s room and throws up from nervousness. Next day he goes out to buy her a new hamster, fixates on a mean father at the pet store, follows him all around town, and never gets as far as killing him. Anna offers to come over and make dinner, so he cleans his apartment. And cleans… and cleans… (I’m trying to imagine this footage in the trailer, complete with Scary Voiceover Guy: “In a world… where ground-in dirt never comes clean…”) In fact, this scene is emblematic of the main artistic miscalculation of the entire movie. There is a nifty moment when Joe, scrubbing his tub, is interrupted by blood dripping from a washcloth he’d forgotten about in the shower caddy; but after having watched him vaccuum, do dishes (a man who uses dishgloves? Must be a psycho), scrub the fireplace tile, wipe around the goldfish bowl, arrange the stacks of newspaper, scrub the toilet… Well, anyone still paying attention by the time the blood drips is probably annoyed at the distraction from all the Hot Cleaning Action.

They spend a platonic night together, and by the next day they’re a couple. A really awkward couple, but a couple nonetheless, the kind that says things like “Tell me about your dreams” and “I hate feeling helpless” and “I don’t want to be alone anymore.” Actually, all of those things are said by Anna; Joe just seems okay with being there. As long as this relationship stuff isn’t too much work, you know…

Wait — so why does he even HAVE a straight razor?

Now. We’re right about forty minutes into the film, and I can tell you exactly what my problem with it is: It’s too slow, and I’m bored. I know, I know. It’s “moody” and “understated” to provide contrast to the horrific nature of serial crimes. But it’s also without much if any narrative momentum. I don’t consider myself an especially cruel or heartless person, but there were times I found myself thinking, “Wouldja just go ahead and kill something already?”

This is also the point at which I stopped to lay bets about the rest of the movie. Either:

A) Anna finds out about Joe’s psychosis (perhaps the scrapbook of gruesome crimes he clips from the newspaper), and he goes off the deep end and starts killing people, saving her for last; or

B) Joe finds some reason to doubt Anna’s love and fidelity, goes off the deep end and starts killing people, saving her for last.

I’m happy to report that I was wrong on both counts.

(Significant spoilers start here. You have been warned.)

Other girls have a hope chest. Anna has a hope shopping bag.

First up, what sets him off is that his goldfish dies. But, as you can guess, that’s not the extent of his issues, and it all starts coming out for us through fragmentary flashbacks and such. For one thing, he’s got a massive Oedipal complex (”Ve alvays go back to ze mozzer”), compounded by guilt over his mother’s death which he was powerless to stop. For another, he witnesses a jogger being assaulted and (presumably) raped on the hillside where his mother used to take him to watch the sunrise, and he’s so traumatized by the voices in his head that he can’t bring himself to intervene. (Watching him sit over on the side with his hands over his ears is actually more disturbing than all of the images of him slicing people up.)

And for another… The couple across the alley is still alive.

Huh? Didn’t he kill them? And if he didn’t, has he killed anybody? He goes to the police because he doesn’t want to hurt anyone else, but they can’t see that he’s ever hurt anyone yet. He breaks up with Anna (over the phone at four in the morning) and fantasizes about killing himself. He even runs his razor all over his torso… and draws no blood. The blade’s been as dull as a butterknife this whole time. We can be reasonably sure that all of his time spent with Anna has been real, but what other memories and visions have been a product of his guilt-laden psychosis?

Despite having all but given up on the movie by the halfway mark, I found myself unwillingly drawn into it by the end. A serial killer who never gets around to killing many people? Boring. A serial killer who discovers he may not be a serial killer? Now that’s intriguing.

Shoulda stuck with the fish.

Even with that, though, the anemic first half works against the movie as a whole. A good “plot switcheroo” movie will pretend wholeheartedly to be one thing, revealing only late in the game that it’s something else entirely. Here, though any attempt to appear as if what we’re really watching is a serial killer movie is hampered by the fact that, if it IS a serial killer movie, it’s not a very good one. And far too many viewers, I expect, will have given up on the movie by the forty-minute mark, fed up with the poor serial killer movie before they discover that it’s actually a good something-else movie.

So now you have a leg up on other viewers. Watch this movie knowing that you’re not seeing the movie advertised on the DVD cover, and you might find yourself enjoying at the end as I did.