Gun Violence, Small Town Stability and the Cauterized Wound in Out of the Blue...
America’s all but resigned itself as a nation to being rocked every week or so by new gun massacres. People who’ve seen it as a worse steady decline than ever since Sandy Hook have...
Art Imitates Life in Scream (1996)
Sometimes art imitates life. Other times, life imitates art. Suddenly there’s no line between what is fiction and what constitutes reality. In August of 1990, life and the art of horror collided when five...
The Riverman (2004): Staring Into the Murderous Abyss
So much is made out of the lives of serial killers— the men who hunt, rape, torture, and kill. What about the men and women who chase them? How are their stories represented? Fictional...
Patty Jenkins and Levelling the Playing Field in Monster (2003)
The name Aileen Wuornos conjures to most the image of a wild eyed, crazed woman who shouted profanities in court after being condemned to death for the killing of several men in Florida between...
Rewriting History: Karla (2006) and the Morality of Adaptation
It was July 6th of 1993 when Karla Homolka was convicted on two counts of manslaughter for her involvement in Paul Bernardo’s spree of abduction, rape, torture, and, eventually, three murders. Bernardo himself landed...
ZODIAC (2007): Never Let Ethics Get in the Way of a Good Story
Anybody who’s serious about appreciating film, and filmmakers, can admit that David Fincher— whether you like him or not— is one of the great contemporary directors in America. If anything, his style is so...
Truth, Identity, and Videotapes in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986)
Most people lie in order to get out of trouble. Even if it’s only a white lie, its purpose is usually to absolve the person telling it from responsibility or, more often than not,...
The Visceral Chaos of Angst (1983)
What happens when a person’s psychopathy isn’t exactly definable as typical mental illness? What do we, as a society, do for and with these people? Between healthcare systems and the justice system, we expect...
Citizen X (1995) and the Failure of Soviet Bureaucracy
Not long ago, Serial Killer Celluloid took a look at Joon-ho Bong’s Memories of Murder (2003)— a fantastic film about South Korean police’s first encounter with serial murder, which came with a steep learning...
The Exploitative Nudity and Visceral Horror of The Hillside Strangler (2004)
Imagine you’re a young woman who recently graduated high school. You plan on moving to Los Angeles looking for your personal version of the American Dream. You hear of an amazing opportunity to model...
Perspective, Realism, & Fighting the Death Penalty in 10 Rillington Place (1971)
When 10 Rillington Place was released in 1971 the disturbing sting of serial killer John Reginald Christie was still lingering in the United Kingdom’s social consciousness. Only five years prior, Timothy Evans - who...
Cults, American Xenophobia and Outsiders in Borderland (2007)
America’s never had a rosy image of Mexico, seeing it either from a flawed economic perspective— assuming everyone south of the border is poor— or from a social perspective tainted by nationalist rhetoric and...
The Untreated Psychopathy of I, Olga Hepnarová (2016)
We’re unsettled by anyone who kills another human being. The idea of taking a person’s life, to the vast majority of us, is morally revolting. Serial killers scare us worse because of the repetitive...
When Serial Killer Becomes Slasher – Ivan Milat, Mick Taylor, and Wolf Creek (2005)
Since the heyday of the big four - Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, and Chucky - slasher movie fans have continually searched for the next great villain. That’s not to say there haven’t...
Blue Caprice (2013) and the Child Soldiers of America
Societal shock gripped the Washington, D.C. area in October of 2002. Over the course of twenty days, ten people were shot and killed by a seemingly invisible sniper who emerged to murder randomly. It...
Paranoia, Marginalization, and Race in Spike Lee’s Summer of Sam (1999)
In the summer of 1977, New York City was suffering after a year of young people being murdered. An unknown man - a human monster - prowled the night, looking for couples alone in...
Black Fly (2014): The Shock of Serial Murder in a Small Town
In the city, people are often scared by serial and spree killers because of the anonymity involved— amongst a large population, a multiple murderer could be anybody, anywhere. In rural areas the fear strikes...
Gacy (2003): The American Jekyll and Hyde
In 1993 on death row in Chester, Illinois, John Wayne Gacy said: “If you serve other people, it will come back to serve you.” A chilling quote from a man who used his trusted...
Fact Versus Fiction: Trusting a Killer in Happy Face Killer (2014)
In 1990, Keith Hunter Jesperson would turn thirty-five years old. He had recently received two major blows to an already dangerously fragile ego. The first disappointment was getting rejected by the Royal Canadian Mounted...
The Abyssal Sadness of Tony (2009)
Gerard Johnson’s 2009 indie film Tony is about a meek Englishman living alone in a flat on a council housing estate and harbouring dark secrets. This unassuming man comes off initially as a depressing...
Necrophilia and Retroactive Vengeance in Ted Bundy (2002)
In the 1970s, Ted Bundy was one of the most infamous names in the newspapers and on television. He committed a series of burglaries, murders, and rapes throughout the decade. He denied his guilt...
Boredom of the Lower Class in The Snowtown Murders (2011)
In North America, the name John Bunting isn’t particularly well known. But in Australia, his name continues to instil a sense of dread in those who were alive during his gruesome streak of murders,...
The Limitations of Law in Memories of Murder (2003)
During the mid-1980s, serial killers were already a staple of American media— everybody knew the names Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Richard Ramirez and others, while murderers like Jeffrey Dahmer, the as of then...
The Police Incompetence and Widespread Societal Misogyny of The Chaser (2008)
Apart from the loss of lives, one of the saddest parts of any serial killer investigation is often realizing many of the victims were those in society most at risk, whether they were women,...
Reality, the BTK Killer, and the Conservative Community in The Clovehitch Killer (2018)
SCRIPTOPHOBIC NOTE: We don't normally do spoiler warnings, however The Clovehitch Killer is a recent release, so be warned!
The Clovehitch Killer (2018) is a great film. It’s also a frustrating one for those who have...