{"id":487355,"date":"2026-02-20T09:39:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T09:39:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/487355\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T09:39:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T09:39:09","slug":"aimless-slasher-lacks-killer-flair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/487355\/","title":{"rendered":"Aimless Slasher Lacks Killer Flair"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you watch the new horror movie \u201cPsycho Killer<\/a>\u201d (not recommended), you\u2019ll recognize a familiar sensation. It\u2019s not boredom, although don\u2019t get me wrong, there\u2019s plenty of that. No, it\u2019s the sneaking suspicion that you\u2019re watching a project that fell out of time. In this case it comes from the mid-2000s, when a grungy, vicious serial killer film could get away with a half-baked plot and one-note characters if \u2014 and this is a big \u201cif\u201d \u2014 it also had a lot of style.<\/p>\n

Sadly, \u201cPsycho Killer\u201d wasn\u2019t made with style in mind. Actually, it doesn\u2019t seem to have anything on its mind. It\u2019s a rudimentary cat-and-mouse thriller with laughable ideas about Satanism and an absurd, cringy ending. The film was written by Andrew Kevin Walker, who penned the late \u201890s grunge thriller classic \u201cSe7en,\u201d but it plays more like the hacky, studio-mandated, unused ending of \u201cSe7en,\u201d which abandoned Walker\u2019s shocking \u201cwhat\u2019s in the box\u201d mindblower in favor of a generic shootout in a church. (Thank god they didn\u2019t film that one.)<\/p>\n

\u201cPsycho Killer\u201d stars Georgina Campbell (\u201cCold Storage<\/a>\u201d) as Jane Archer, a highway patrol officer who loses her husband, also a cop, after he pulls a serial killer over in a routine traffic stop. In the killer\u2019s meager defense there was no probable cause and the cop was being an a-hole. But anyway, Jane becomes obsessed with finding the so-called \u201cSatanic Slasher\u201d (I guess all the good serial killer names were taken), so she hunts him across America\u2019s highways, deciphering the secret codes he leaves behind in bloody graffiti, on her mission to stop his roaring rampage.<\/p>\n

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde: To lose a husband may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose your whole personality is carelessness. Maybe you can chalk it up to the grieving process but Archer has no recognizable human quirks, nor any qualities that distinguish her as an individual. She\u2019s a note card with the word \u201cPROTAGONIST\u201d on it, followed by the letters \u201cTBD.\u201d Campbell heroically plays Archer like there\u2019s something to actually play. It\u2019s tragic when a movie gives a talented performer nothing, and it\u2019s admirable that Campbell tries, at least, to make \u201cnothingade.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Jacob\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

James Preston Rogers plays the Satanic Slasher as a towering hulk with long, unwashed hair and a deep, sonorous voice. Maybe he got lost on his way to audition for Heathcliff in the new \u201cWuthering Heights<\/a>.\u201d We never get a good look at his face so Rogers\u2019 performance is largely vibes, with an emphasis on the \u201clarge\u201d part. The sound design makes the Satanic Slasher\u2019s footfalls resonate like an elephant wearing galoshes trudging around old floorboards, no matter what surface he\u2019s actually stepping on. (Cool mask, though.)<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a side quest in \u201cPsycho Killer\u201d where the Satanic Slasher is surrounded by other Satanists, and it\u2019s the only interesting sequence in the film, because for a moment it feels like we might be getting somewhere. Our villain is a true believer and everyone else is just in it for the blood orgies. You might even dare to imagine this film has something to critique about the divide in organized religion, or the dangers of extremism. But in the end what it really has to say is that the second act needed padding.<\/p>\n

\u201cPsycho Killer\u201d is the directorial debut of Gavin Polone. He executive produced \u201cCurb Your Enthusiasm\u201d and backed a host of memorable genre films, including \u201c8mm\u201d (also scripted by Walker), \u201cStir of Echoes\u201d and \u201cZombieland.\u201d Unfortunately, he just doesn\u2019t have enough zazz to bulk up this material. \u201cPsycho Killer\u201d could have compensated for its simplicity, and even its silliness, if the storytelling was more exciting than the story. Instead the whole enterprise is weirdly inert. Even the opening credit sequence, with its montage of pagan symbol clip art, looks like a free screensaver.<\/p>\n

But the greatest crime committed by \u201cPsycho Killer,\u201d besides the embarrassing finale, is that it tries to take a Talking Heads song down with it. The 1977 single \u201cPsycho Killer\u201d is a serial killer ballad, and co-writer David Byrne once said he imagined it as a fusion of Alice Cooper and Randy Newman. Now that\u2019s style, and it deserves a better film than this. Besides, there\u2019s another Talking Heads song which makes a lot more sense as the title of an aimless and foreboding car trip: \u201cRoad to Nowhere<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Joe\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you watch the new horror movie \u201cPsycho Killer\u201d (not recommended), you\u2019ll recognize a familiar sensation. It\u2019s not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":487356,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[196219,49,48,75,196220,93901,93900,337,93902],"class_list":["post-487355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-andrew-kevin-walker","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-gavin-polone","tag-georgina-campbell","tag-james-preston-rogers","tag-movies","tag-psycho-killer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/487356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}