‘Psycho Killer’ Review: An Unmitigated Studio Disaster The Likes of Which We Rarely See
Awful in almost every conceivable way, ‘Psycho Killer’ is a note-perfect exercise in screwing things up from the get-go and never recovering as it trudges through a ridiculously inert conclusion.
You’d never believe the same guy who wrote Se7en, The Game, and The Killer (2023) could ever pen something as horrendous as Psycho Killer. Of course, he also wrote that terrible remake of The Wolfman in 2010, but even that one had glimmers of being salvageable. Apart from an alluring opening credits sequence, there is nothing director Gavin Polone can save from one of the worst screenplays you’ll likely ever encounter, as soon as its titular character (played by James Preston Rogers, but likely dubbed through ADR by someone else) begins to speak.
Never has a movie taken such a rapid nosedive, yet no one in this disastrously misguided slasher actually speaks like a human being. We never see the killer’s face, but he has Tommy Wiseau hair, Gene Simmons sunglasses, and speaks with a horrendously dubbed-over voice that looks as if drunk versions of Venom, John Kramer, Darth Vader, and Cookie Monster had a f–ed up baby. It’s that bad, and it essentially sinks this entire thing, preventing any tension or terror from developing. Could you imagine the exact same film, but without the killer speaking? It still would’ve been bad, but it at least would’ve felt like Polone attempted to do something with the premise of a Satan-worshipping interstate serial killer on a mass-murdering mission to unleash Hell upon the world.
There isn’t a moment where we buy into the killer’s motivations or are scared around him, because he has a goofy voice. I’m not joking. The voice completely removes any sense of dread around the character, and retroactively turns every scene with him into unintentionally hilarious comedy (especially during a scene involving a moving gas truck, the hardest I’ve laughed at anything in a movie this year, but I wouldn’t dare spoil its pleasures). It’s even more exacerbated by the presence of Malcolm McDowell as Mr. Pendleton, who is also a Satanist and runs a cult with devoted followers that partake in…LSD-driven orgies. Hey, at least McDowell got paid, although when was the last time he gave a performance of note?
Speaking of, Polone stages, within the orgy, one of the most repulsive mass-killing sequences I’ve seen in a major motion picture. This isn’t hyperbole – it’s genuinely vile, and made me sick to my stomach. There’s no way a Hollywood film studio like Disney, who hold certain standards in what’s socially acceptable to showcase within cinema, even in horror movies (since they’re in the business of adult-skewing entertainment ever since their acquisition of the 20th Century Fox library), could ever think what Polone shows in this scene is in any way acceptable.
The violence is shockingly unpleasant, downright exploitative, and just feels as if the filmmaker wants to bathe in Terrifier-esque perversions rather than craft a compelling character study related to a detective (played by Georgina Campbell) who will stop at nothing to hunt and kill the “Satanic Slasher” before he murders anyone else. Riffing on the archetypal “obsessed detective” stories of The Silence of the Lambs and Longlegs, but without saying anything new, and without developing its protagonist in meaningful ways. You’d also be surprised that an actress of the calibre of Georgina Campbell, who has always given incredible performances, would ever churn out something as bad as this, a turn that would likely kill a career if they weren’t a known actor already.
Her detective Jane Thorne has zero agency of her own, and little to work with in a screenplay that gives any actor, even the most talented one, no favors. There’s nothing to do here. It’s an especially bad performance in an even worse movie, yet one that has to be seen to be believed. In this day and age, it feels rare that a major Hollywood studio could ever churn out something this disastrously misguided and hilariously awful – especially at a theatrical level. A bunch of bad movies fill our streaming algorithms (such as Rich Lee’s screenlife adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds with Ice Cube), but few with such power release in [empty] cinemas.
Psycho Killer is one of those films. It’s a disaster of Wiseau-esque proportions, a once-in-a-generation piece of flopsweat so horrible it could be the next big “drinking game” or “watch while high” cult classic. It’s certainly terrible in every conceivable aspect, unwatchable even, but it also won’t be a film I’ll forget anytime soon. Despite its nasty, repulsive kills, there’s something so alluring about its awfulness that anyone who dares step into a dark room to watch the film might very well be entranced by its power. No wonder The Mouse didn’t want anyone from the press to see this in advance – it was just too good (for all the wrong reasons).