Billy O'Brien's I Am Not A Serial Killer is a subversive genre exercise, a singular vision that is often enthralling but borderline preposterous in its deconstruction of sociopathic ideology. Taking place in a small Midwestern town, the story is centered around John, a troubled teenager who has little empathy for anyone around him. Showing signs of a sociopath with homicidal tendencies, John has been forced by his mother, who works as an embalmer, to see a psychiatrist, but she still worries daily about her son's overall lack of empathy and general cold demeanor around death. When a series of grizzly murders begin to plague the small town, John's curiosity leads him to discover that one of his neighbors, Crowley, an old quiet man, may be responsible, something which strokes a curiosity in John, who must wrestle with his own inner-demon as he attempts to bring Crowley to justice. Billy O'Brien's I Am Not A Serial Killer is a singular genre film that is endlessly intriguing, a story that taps into some interesting ideas about normalcy, death, and empathy, but unfortunately succumbs to borderline silliness. Very much a character study during most of its running time, I am Not A Serial Killer paints a portrait of a character in John who has fallen down this path due to a variety of factors, ranging from time spent around death at the embalment facility and family dysfunction, to childhood neglect from a father he never sees. The film doesn't make excuses for John's strange behavior but it does document the environmental factors with at least in part define him, with the most intelligent examination of the film being its deconstruction surrounding the fallacies of normalcy. John is a social outcast, a character who is misunderstood by nearly everyone around him, with his psychiatrist being the only character who is receptive to a conversation about how John sees the world. Through this relationship between John and his psychiatrist, who views John as a sociopath but not a bad person, I Am A Serial Killer exposes an important distinction about cultural predictors and normalcy, delivering an important reminder that societal-based predictors of behavior are important yet dangerous, as it's important that we as individuals never define an individual with broad strokes, no matter the similarities to past evil. John is a cold, somewhat frightening character who is entranced by death and humanity's fear of it, a character who lacks empathy, yet there remains a a huge distinction between him, and Crowley, whose murderous ways completely lack any type of respect for human life. Considering the main character of I Am A Serial Killer is a sociopath, the film is a subversive treat by nature, but unfortunately the film comes a bit off the rails in the back-half when it reveals Crowley to be somewhat of a supernatural manifestation of evil. Apologists will point to perhaps this supernatural element of the film as merely a psychological manifestation of John, but this is dishonest when considering the fact that his own mother witnesses this supernatural evil herself. Featuring a memorable performance by Christopher Lloyd as Crowley, While I Am A Serial Killer left me intrigued and engaged from start to finish, but unfortunately its overly didactic approach at times, and silly supernatural elements left me somewhat disappointed in the end, especially considering the film's early strength's as a character study about the psychology of a sociopath.
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AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
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