Killer Inside Me (2010)

80%

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Sophisticated murder movie that posits a White culture replete with characters who cannot move on from their inadequate childhoods to become grownups. As adults such people engage in desperate attempts to not only get attention and sympathy from strangers but to substitute physical sensations for emotions. By feeding off their own negativity they tacitly admit to believing leopards cannot change their spots and to having nothing good in their lives to commemorate. here, the film fails to balance cause with affect and we are left with very little to go on regarding the central characters strange life choices other than he would rather waste his life appearing normal rather than engage in the necessary work of becoming fully human.

Casey AFFLECK is excellent as the serial killer who is fully assimilated into the community within which he lives and serves as a deputy sheriff. he gets the idea of someone desperately trying to conceal his degeneracy behind a wall of ordinariness - even to the extent of never carrying a gun and being seen (Iago-like) as honest and upright.

This film also proves the old saw that films made from pulp novels (in this case Jim Thompson) are usually better than the books from which they are derived as well as that they can still work well in the transition from page to screen. Like a Clockwork Orange, this presents the unpleasantness matter-of-factly as if somehow it was all rather normal or even tolerated that people are supposed never to be what they seem.

Copyright © 2010 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.