Watcher, on AFN

Julia's predicament is similar to Jimmy Stewart’s in Rear Window, but instead of a broken leg, she is hobbled by a language barrier. She also has a useless husband, who makes a poor substitute for either Gracy Kelly or Thelma Ritter. Regardless, she starts to suspect the serial killer stalking Bucharest is watching her from across the street, but nobody takes her seriously in director-screenwriter Chloe Okuno’s Watcher, which airs Tuesday on Armed Forces Network.

Francis’s family used to speak Romanian when he was young, so he feels at home in Bucharest. Julia doesn’t, at least not yet, but she was about to give up on her acting career, so she agreed to relocate. Nevertheless, she feels immediately feels socially and culturally isolated. She also has the sensation of being watched. It looks that way too, judging from the illuminated silhouette, behind the curtains of the apartment opposite them.

As an unnerving bonus, the serial killer known as the spider has killed several women in the neighborhood. Julia wonders if all this creepiness might be connected when a mystery man starts following her. She never gets a good look, but he seems drably non-descript in an ominous serial killer kind of way. Of course, the cops do not take her concerns seriously and Francis tries to explain everything away as a product of stress and suggestion.

Despite Shudder and IFC Midnight handling the domestic distribution for Watcher, it really is more of De Palma-esque thriller (the term “Hitchcockian” really ought to be reserved for a select few), rather than a horror movie. However, it works rather well on those terms.

Nocturnal Bucharest is definitely creepy. In fact, some of the most unsettling sequences tie into the anxiety you might remember from being out too late in a foreign city, where you really do not know the language. Okuno also captures the unnerving feeling of being watched. (And seriously, why would their furnished apartment come without curtains?)

Okuno has discussed Francis’s disbelief in feminist terms, but Julia’s frustration is more universal than that. Too often, people ignore warnings and suspicious behavior, because acting on it would be awkward. It seems easier to explain it away, but that often leads to bigger trouble long-term.

You Can’t Run Forever, Starring J.K. Simmons

A sheriff must be pretty bad if his electorate votes to recall him mid-term. In this case, it left two very junior deputies responding to calls on their own. Maybe that would not be so bad on average days, but Miranda is definitely not having a typical.day. A psycho is chasing her through the woods, killing anyone who crosses his path in Michelle Schumacher’s You Can’t Run Forever, which opens today in New York.

Viewers will get more details later, but Wade Bennett was always pretty jerky, so when he gets triggered, he sets off on a killing spree—and he hasn’t stopped yet. He follows Miranda and her stepdad Eddie from a rest-stop, killing him and chasing her into the forest.

To make matters worse, Miranda was already fragile. She never really recovered from finding her father’s body, after he committed suicide. However, she harbors no anger towards Eddie or her half sister Emily. They were both trying help her heel, but they are understandably distracted by her mother Jenny’s pregnancy. Eventually, Miranda manages to get a message to her mother, but it is all too clear Deputy Morgan and Deputy Dwyer are out of their depths, especially the latter. To be fair, they are also quite busy dealing with all the dead bodies Bennett leaves in his wake.

It should be noted Bennett did not intend to hunt Miranda for sport. He simply wants to kill her, even after she runs into the woods. This is not yet another Most Dangerous Game. Instead, it is another stalker movie, very much in the tradition of Paronnaud’s Hunted.

There are a lot of contrivances in Run Forever and some serious credibility issues. Bennett is older than I am, but somehow, he can cover vast distances in the blink of an eye. Admittedly, he is considerably more onery too. Yet, the film works to a surprising extent, because we genuinely care about the family in jeopardy. Schumacher and co-screenwriter Carolyn Carpenter exercise good judgment and wise restraint by not introducing an exploitative abuse subplot. To the contrary, Eddie is a good stepfather, who dies trying to protect Miranda. Consequently, his death has tragic resonance that makes viewers care, perhaps even in spite of themselves.

Schumacher also has J.K. Simmons growling and swaggering his way through the picture as Bennett. He still isn’t as scary as he was in Whiplash, but he is still seriously sinister. In fact, Schumacher has Simmons in real-life too, since they are married.

Nightwatch: Demons are Forever, on Shudder

Serial killers are beyond reform or redemption—but that’s a good thing for movie producers. When a serial killer film is successful, they can always make a sequel, even in Denmark. If you haven’t seen the original Nightwatch or the American remake (both helmed by Ole Bornedal), forget the name Peter Wormer. It seemed Martin Bork and Kalinka Martens survived the killer at the end of the 1994 film, but they never escaped the post-traumatic stress. Unfortunately, Wormer also survived, so he most likely returns to his old ways in Bornedal’s Nightwatch: Demons are Forever, which premieres Friday on Shudder.

Despite the promise of a happy marriage, Martens was paranoid Wormer would return for her and Bork, she took her own life several years ago. Maybe in a future sequel, we will learn she was really murdered, but Bornedal does go there yet. Consequently, Bork has been a pill-popping shell of himself, who is largely dependent on his college student daughter Emma (played by the director’s daughter, Fanny Leander Bornedal), rather than vice versa.

Obviously, it is an extraordinarily bad idea, but Emma takes the same night watchman job at the morgue where her father worked in the first film. Her parents never told her about the incident with Wormer, so Emma hopes to learn more at the infamous site. However, her family investigation quickly leads her to the state mental hospital, where the blind and supposedly feeble Wormer remains in custody. Her inquiry takes on great urgency when a copycat killer starts gruesomely butchering Bork’s old friends, using Wormer’s old scalping M.O.

Fans of the original will be happy to see Bornedal got the old gang back together again—at least the characters who are still living, including Bork’s somewhat sleazy pal, Jens Arnkiel. The original Nightwatch was a breakout film for both the director and lead actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, so it makes sense Bornedal’s screenplay explores the notion of legacy. Instead of just bringing back the old-timers for fan-mollifying cameos, Demons are Forever digs deeply into the long-term psychological distress experienced by the survivors and how it shaped their offspring—including Wormer’s (just who that might be would be telling, but it is easy to guess).

He Went That Way: The Chimp and the Serial Killer

This might be the first film about an Ice Capades star. That would be Spanky, the ice-skating chimpanzee. In 1964, his owner, Dave Pitts, was driving him across country when they picked up serial killer Larry Lee Ranes. Of course, he was a “Lee.” The fictionalized trio will not exactly get their kicks on Route 66 in this highly fictionalized re-imagining of their road trip. Also drawing inspiration from Conrad Hilberry’s novel Luke Karamazov, Jeffrey Darling’s He Went that Way is now playing in Brooklyn.

“Jim,” as the Pitts surrogate shall be known, is driving Spanky to an appointment, but it is clearly not one he is eager to reach. Business has been rough and his wife has apparently made a deal he regrets. Perhaps that is why he ill-advisedly offers a ride to “Bobby,” as the Ranes character has been renamed (while Spanky is still Spanky.)

At their first stop at a motel, Bobby shows his violent nature. Yet, somehow Jim talks him into sparing his life, probably thanks to the hitchhiker’s weird affection for Spanky. Somehow, Jim convinces the stone-cold killer that he will drop him off at his stated destination, as per their “agreement,” even though Bobby’s supposed plan to reconcile with an old girlfriend is obviously bogus.

It is relatively easy to understand why Darling and screenwriter Evan M. Wiener made certain decisions, but they turned out to be mistakes. The combination of ice-skating chimp and serial killer sounds very tabloid, in a Weekly World News kind of way. Instead, they opted for a dreamy, artsy sort of approach, but the execution results in a logy, listless vibe.

The “Jim” character is also an awkward departure from reports of the athletic real-life Pitts (who gets a chance to tell speak for himself over the closing credits). Zachary Quinto’s portrayal is so socially awkward and self-sabotaging, it is a minor miracle Spanky doesn’t kill him, let alone the unstable and impulsive Bobby.

Paul Vecchiali’s The Strangler

If the French police departments’ records had been computerized in the early 1970s, they might have caught on to Emile much sooner. As a child, he witnessed a strangulation using his own knit scarf. As an adult, he commits similar murders with identical scarves. Each woman he kills is a depressed and lonely, so he truly believes he is doing them a favor, as he explains to Inspector Simon Dangret, each time he calls him. He might be right, because everyone is basically lonely and neurotic in Paul Vecchiali’s freshly restored The Strangler, which opens today at Anthology Film Archives.

Obviously, what young Emile witnessed had a traumatic impact on his emotional development, but Vecchiali implies he was a slightly weird kid even before. He is keenly observant, singling out potential victims who are on the brink of suicide anyway, so Emile just relieves them of the burden of such a heavy responsibility. After a bad breakup, Anna Carre assumes she could be next, so she approaches Dangret, suggesting herself as bait.

Dangret is a police inspector masquerading as a journalist, who takes to the airwaves, offering to give the killer a fair hearing. Soon, Emile starts calling Dangret and even agrees to meetings with the presumed journalist, under conditions he tightly controls. Meanwhile, Carre will not take no for an answer, so Dangret agrees to an unlikely sexual relationship instead.

It is easy to see how the under-screened Strangler might have influenced a whole lot of more famous serial killer movies. The press materials refer to it as a French “Giallo,” which might be overstating matters, but it is easy to believe it could have been a source of inspiration, particularly in the way all three main characters eventually develop relationships with each other, which are symbiotic and voyeuristic.

Some critics also claim it as under-heralded classic of “queer cinema” as well. If they want to read that into Emile’s anti-social homicidal behavior, that’s their right, but why would they even want to? Regardless, you can watch The Strangler without feeling Vecchiali is beating them over the head with ‘isms and identity politics.

Fantasia ’23: Devils

Evidently, Travolta had it easy in Face/Off. His mind-body swap was with Nic Cage, who was crazy, but not nearly as sinister as this Korean serial killer. Det. Choi Jae-hwan had been pursuing Cha Jin-hyuk, until he wakes up inside the psycho’s body. It is obviously inconvenient, but there are also potential advantages when it comes to catching Cha’s accomplices in Kim Jae-hoon’s Devils, which had its North American premiere at the 2023 Fantasia International FilmFestival.

Cha is the leader of a band of dark-web snuff film sickos, so yes, he is really bad. They have long eluded Choi, even killing brother-in-law, a fellow cop, during the prologue. Choi wants him bad, so he pursues him at all costs when they receive an anonymous tip. However, both Choi and Cha disappear into the forest, leaving the cop’s protégé-partner Det. Kim Min-sung completely baffled.

A month later, they mysteriously re-appear. The man who looks like Choi claims to have no memory of the last few weeks, whereas the man who looks like Cha wakes up in the hospital, knowing he is in fact Choi. He also realizes his family is in serious danger from his nemesis.

It all sounds like Face/Off, but its not. Devils turns out to be much more sinister and devious, but the big secret holds up incredibly well, at least by high-concept thriller standards. Arguably, Devils turns out to be more believable than that John Woo film it so readily brings to mind.

Johnny & Clyde: Serial Killers, Demons, and a Sitting Congressman

Please do not accidentally call them “Bonnie & Clyde,” because they aren’t worthy of the comparison, not to the real-life outlaws, the musical, or any of the films depicting them, except maybe Bonnie & Clyde vs. Dracula. In this case, Johnny and his lover are taking on a demonically protected crime syndicate, when they aren’t killing innocent victims. Like the Bonnie & Clyde mash-up, the resulting mayhem is not as fun as it sounds. In fact, the violence and nihilism are a bit much in Tom DeNucci’s Johnny & Clyde, which releases this Friday.

Former Sheriff Randall Lock is determined to catch and kill Johnny & Clyde now that they are back in Rhode Island. The serial killer couple tortured Lock’s daughter to death, but perversely, the film expects viewers to root for them instead of him. Sadly, those expectations are probably based on the fact he is old, fat, and pasty white, whereas they are young and fit. However, the title twosome are actually the most loathsome characters in this unpleasant film.

Even Alana Hart is more endearing than Johnny & Clyde. Hart is managing her gangster father’s local gambling interests, with the supernational assistance of his ancient satanic cult. She is definitely the boss, but she dresses like Larry Flint’s administrative assistant. When Johnny and Clyde hijack one of Hart’s cash shipment, the surviving guard tries to exchange information regarding the syndicate’s secret vaults for his life. Hart knows Johnny & Clyde and their freaky friends are coming, so she arranges to have a demon named Bakwas waiting for them.

As Johnny & Clyde, Avan Jogia and Ajani Russell so completely lack charisma, viewers will only want to see them get the painful payback they so richly deserve. Of course, that rather undermines any sense of rooting interest in anyone on-screen. Sadly, there is no pithy Tarantino dialogue to punch-up this Natural Born Killers supernatural rip-off. Frankly, all the casual cruelty, depicted in such a flat, unremarkable style, make the film a relentlessly grim viewing experience.

Damian Szifron’s To Catch a Killer

This mass murderer is madman rather than a terrorist. That is bad news for the FBI, because it makes the unknown suspect harder to predict. “Fortunately,” local cop Eleanor Falco has so much emotional baggage, she can kind of relate. That is a good thing, at least according to Special Agent Geoffrey Lammark, who makes her his liaison to the city police. He is not easy to work with, but the ruthless sniper gives them plenty of motivation in Damian Szifron’s To Catch a Killer, which opens Friday in New York.

At the strike of New Year’s Day, a sniper blew away several dozen partiers. Somehow, the killer eluded the police, despite Falco’s heads-up policing of the crime scene, which does not go unnoticed by Lammark.

Frankly, most of the procedural stuff in To Catch is very run-of-the-mill. The only thing that really distinguishes the script co-written by Szifron and Jonathan Wakeham is the time devoted to internal FBI infighting. Far too often, Lammark and Falco must waste time with bogus leads and dubious strategies mandated from above. If you were not already skeptical of Federal bureaucracy before, To Catch a Killer will help finish the job.

The actual identity of the killer is kept secret until the third act, so at least the film does not feel like a warmed-over Quinn Martin rerun. When he is finally revealed, it is an interesting-looking, quite imposing thesp playing the mystery killer.

The Ritual Killer

Who better to catch a serial killer than an eighty-something year-old anthropologist? It probably makes more sense than asking another serial killer for help, especially since Dr. Mackles is an expert in Muti, the traditional spiritual medicine practiced in Southern Africa. It appears there is a rogue practitioner committing sacrificial murders to benefit his clients in George Gallo’s The Ritual Killer, which releases today in theaters and on VOD.

The guilt Det. Lucas Boyd carries after his daughter’s death has left him nearly non-functional, except when chasing violent criminals, who then bear the full brunt of his rage. He and his partner start investigating a trail of bodies mutilated with surgical precision that lead to the mysterious Randoku. The large, scarred man definitely stands out, but he is still frustratingly hard to catch.

To interpret the African writing and exotic spices found at a crime scene, Boyd enlists the help of Dr. Mackles, an African Studies professor, who is clearly freaked out by them. Initially, he tries to play cool and beg off the case, but he inevitably starts advising Boyd on the Muti aspects of the ritual sacrifices.

That all sounds like a passable premise, but the screenplay (unpromisingly credited to three scribes: Bob Bowersox, Francesco Cinquemani, and Luca Gilberto) proceeds in such an orderly straight line, it turns into a total snooze. At least the one moment of lunacy at the end gives viewers something to remember, but the rest is the stuff of mediocre 1990s TV-movies.

The legendary Morgan Freeman looks about as bored playing Mackles as he did in the underwhelming Vanquish, which was also helmed by Gallo (maybe Freeman should stop working with him). The saving grace is Cole Hauser, whose hard-boiled brooding as Boyd is better than the film deserves.

A Woman Kills, Music by Bernard Vitet

This film could have been an inspiration to the New French Extremity and other fringe Francophone filmmakers, but it was discarded prior to its completion due to filmmaker Jean-Denis Bonan’s prior difficulties with French film censors. How cult could it have been? Consider this: erotic vampire auteur Jean Rollin has a small role as a cop. For real film lovers, it is fascinating to finally watch it, but it arrives at a precarious time, given its provocative subject matter. Ready or not, Bonan’s A Woman Kills releases today, in all its raw glory, as a limited edition BluRay.

Helene Picard has been executed for the murder of a young street woman, but rather embarrassingly a fresh body has turned up, killed in an identical fashion. Picard seemed like a logical suspect, because she had a long history of anti-social behavior—awkwardly including lesbianism. Yet, it certainly seems it wasn’t her.

The cops are baffled, but the minister of justice still assigns his assistant, Solange Lebas, to investigate Louis Guilbeau, a ministerial bureaucrat exhibiting alarming signs of paranoia. At first, she suspects he is mad as a hatter, but somehow Guilbeau still manages to seduce her. Perhaps, they share an affinity as children of Algerian Colonialists (which was highly significant for a film made in 1968).

A Woman Kills is vintage anarchist cinema through and through, especially the instrumental soundtrack composed by French Free Jazz pioneer Bernard Vitet. If nothing else, the way Vitet’s roiling discordant score mirrors the characters’ disturbed state of mind perfectly illustrates how horror movie makers have been missing the boat on Free Jazz.

Arguably, Bonan’s film is even more subversive now than when it was shot. It should be quite a site to see critics twist themselves into pretzels addressing aspects of A Woman Kills, for many of the same reasons they are so uncomfortable discussing De Palma’s Dressed to Kill, particularly because of the way both films present transvestism.

Mindcage: Martin Lawrence Gets Dramatic

Thanks to Silence of the Lambs, dozens of subsequent movies and books featured cops seeking the advice of convicted serial killers to catch newer psychopaths. In real life, this sounds like an incredibly bad strategy, with little up-side. Regardless, people still assume serial killers are all geniuses and the killers themselves style themselves as transgressive artistes, when they are really just cruel, anti-social murderers. The serial killer known as “The Artist” took it to extreme levels. A frighteningly consistent copycat has adopted his M.O., but seeking his insight turns out to be about as dangerous as a rational person would suspect in Mauro Borrelli’s Mindcage, which releases Friday in theaters and on VOD.

Before he was captured and convicted, The Artist would pose his victims in elaborate art installations that he called his “masterpieces.” Det. Jake Doyle was part of the team that caught him, but his late partner was killed that fateful night, in a bizarre, almost spoilery kind of way. Now he is working the copycat case with Det. Mary Kelly, who will be the one visiting The Artist in prison, because she has a psych degree and no prior history with The Artist that he could use against her.

Of course, he can miraculously tell Kelly where to find clues hidden within the bodies and crime scenes. As the spectacular killings continue, the reluctant authorities even start to consider cutting a deal with The Artist, but that most definitely does not sit well with Doyle.

Mindcage has been billed as Martin Lawrence’s first role outside of comedy (assuming you do not count Do the Right Thing, which would probably be his most borderline previous film). The truth is, his performance as Doyle is the best thing going for Mindcage. There is a big twist involving his character that maybe you might guess or maybe you won’t, but he does a nice job reflecting it on-screen.

Missing: A Kind of Serial-Killer Thriller We Haven’t Seen Before

These days, it is hard for ping pong parlors to compete with video games for the gaming market. Satoshi Harada ought to know. His ping pong business went under, soon after his wife died. Understandably, he has been in a bad way ever since. This film is not likely to do much to improve ping pong’s commercial popularity, even though it holds some sentimental appeal for Harada’s daughter, Kaeda. The outlook for Harada is not much better when he disappears in Shinzo Katayama’s Missing, which opens tomorrow in theaters.

It seems like Kaeda takes care of her moody father more then vice versa. Her pleading just got him out of an embarrassing shoplifting charge, so she is in no mood to listen to his crazy-talk about recognizing the notorious “No Name” serial killer, Terumi Yamauchi. However, it suddenly sounds significant when he disappears without a trace. It takes her a while to put together the pieces, but she eventually deduces Yamauchi has been using her father’s phone and assuming his identity.

With the help of a prospective boyfriend, she tracks Yamauchi to the coastal village, where he has been hiding. At this point, Katayama flashes back to show us the full tragic story. The nature of Yamauchi’s murders will definitely unsettle a lot of viewers, even, or maybe especially, those who usually embrace “edgy” subject matter. What makes Missing so unusual and provocative is the nature of Yamauchi’s murders. Frankly, he does not even see himself as a killer, but rather a service provider. Let’s just say in the assisted suicide debate, he is the ultimate slippery slope. He is also a sadist sociopath.

As a result, the reviews for Missing will likely be quite tortured and conflicted, but it is in fact quite a sinister and intense serial killer thriller. It shares a kinship with early Kiyoshi Kurosawa films, both in terms of theme and tone. Even Katayama’s scenes in broad daylight (evocatively shot by cinematographer Naoya Ikeda) feel dark and moody.

Mark Hartley’s The Girl at the Window

Amy Poynton has way less credibility than Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window. Her recent trauma makes her easier to dismiss than Bobby Driscoll in The Window, but also easier to forgive. Witnessing her father’s death was a tough break—one she clearly has yet to fully deal with. However, she is not necessarily wrong about her suspicions in Mark Hartley’s The Girl at the Window, which releases Friday on VOD.

Poynton was not super-happy about moving out into the far exurbs, but her mother Barbara thought it would be good for her. It turned out okay for her mom, since she started seeing the next-door neighbor, Chris Mancini. Her mom assumes Poynton jut doesn’t like her new boyfriend, because he is a little rough around the edges—and he just isn’t her father. However, Poynton is convinced Mancini is the notorious Clockwork Killer.

The serial killer had been on a brief hiatus, but he recently started abducting and murdering young women again. Poynton noticed Mancini’s van returning from late-night drives on the same evenings the Clockwork Killer took new victims. Of course, her mother does not listen to her and the police are predisposed to write her off, due to their previous history with her. Only her bestie Lain Chen will help her, but even her patience will be limited, at least until she is convinced the hard way.

The screenplay by Terence Hammond and Nicolette Minster is mostly rather conventional, but there is a big changes-everything twist that Hartley turns quite nicely. Presumably, that is what attracted the Ozploitation master (having helmed the doc Not Quite Hollywood and the Patrick remake) in the first place.

Holy Spider, from Iran, by Way of Denmark

Saeed Hanaei was sort of like Iran’s version of Soviet serial killer Andrei Chikatilo (a.k.a. “Citizen X,” who continued to kill over decades, because the authorities deliberately ignored evidence linking his murders). Their prolific slayings exposed the corruption and incompetence of the respective regimes. In fact, the Islamist authorities were reluctant to stop the real-life Hanaei, for ideological reasons, because he only targeted “fallen” women working on the streets of Mashhad, the spiritual capitol of Shia Islam. Rather logically, it will be a woman journalist who exposes him in Ali Abbasi’s Holy Spider, which opens tomorrow in New York.

Just checking into a hotel in Mashhad is an ordeal for Rahimi, since she is a single woman, unaccompanied by a man. She has to pull her journalist credentials, threatening a scandal in the papers. Rahimi is here to investigate the “Spider Killer,” since the local authorities clearly lack a sense of urgency.

To make matters worse, Rahimi’s bad reputation (quite scandalously, she filed a sexual harassment complaint against her former boss) has followed her to Mashhad. Nevertheless, Sharifi, the cautious local reporter who has received boasted calls from the killer agrees to help her investigation. However, winning the trust of the city’s prostitutes will be very difficult. Yet, they keep coming home with the murderous Hanaei, because that is what their business requires.

Holy Spider is Columbo-like in the sense that it reveals Hanaei’s identity as the killer right from the start. Abbasi also vividly depicts in his brutality, in stark, uncompromising terms. The misogyny of Iranian society also comes through loud and clear, especially during a scene in which Rahimi barely escapes an attempted sexual assault, at the hands of Mashhad’s police chief. For a so-called “holy city,” Mashhad looks like a pervasively predatory environment.

Yet, the investigation is only half the story. The rest of the film consists of the trial, wherein Hanaei tries to ride his public popularity to an acquittal, on the grounds his murders were theologically justified. Much to Rahimi’s concern and disgust, there is a very real chance Hanaei could pull it off.

For obvious reasons, it was Denmark that selected the Danish-based, Iranian-born Abbasi’s film as its International Oscar submission, rather than Iran. However, Abbasi filmed on location in Jordan, which doubles convincingly for the grim, dark streets of Mashhad (at least for viewers who have never visited, but have seen a number of Iranian films).

Holy Spider is definitely a visceral indictment of institutionalized injustice, intolerance, and sexism in contemporary Iranian society. However, it is also a potent hybrid serial killer thriller and courtroom drama. Indeed, the uniquely perverse aspects of Iran’s justice system greatly complicate the prosecution and consequently generate greater suspense than an equivalent case ever could, in just about any other jurisdiction.

In a performance of great personal courage (considering the possibility of subsequent reprisals), established Persian thesp Mehdi Bajestani is frighteningly intense as Hanaei. It is not the physical violence that makes him such a monster. It is his absolutely conviction in the righteousness of his murders.

Brooklyn Horror ’22: Influencer

Sure, online influencers are shallow and talentless, but killing them still seems a little harsh. Tiktokkers on the other hand, should definitely be fair game. So far, Madison only pretends to enjoy her first-class vacation in Thailand when she posts for the sponsors who paid for it. However, things start to pick up when she meets CW, but her new “friend” bears watching in Kurtis David Harder’s Influencer, which had its world premiere at the 2022 Brooklyn Horror Film Festival.

Madison has been fighting with her boyfriend Ryan, who has been the brains (such as they are) behind her influencer career. He is a little controlling, but she clearly has no idea how to enjoy the freedom now at her fingertips. A chance meeting with CW changes all that. Suddenly, she is going to all the cool, off-the-beaten-path places and staying at CW’s fab pad out in the jungle.

Unfortunately, CW is not exactly who she presents herself to be. She also has a habit of targeting influencer airheads. She is a careful planner and a brilliant improvisor, but this time things do not go exactly the way she anticipates during the course of the film.

Influencer is a clever horror-tinged-thriller that is sort of like the original Dutch The Vanishing for the social media generation. You can even see the influence (so to speak) of a Hitchcock classic, but Harder and co-screenwriter Tesh Guttikonda give that twist a further twist.

Of course, the Thai setting definitely puts experienced genre viewers on their guard, since nothing good ever comes from Thai vacations in movies or TV, like in The Flight Attendant, “’V’ for Vacation” in ABCs of Death 2, Death of Me, or dozens of other examples.

Ruzowitzky’s Hinterland

Sadly, too many Vietnam veterans could relate to the indifferent and sometimes hostile homecomings these Austrian POWs experienced after WWI. In retrospect, this turned out to be a terrible long-term social policy. Fully cognizant of the scars he carries, former Lt. Peter Perg is skeptical he can transition back to civilian life, but the ex-cop agrees to help his former colleagues hunt for a serial killer preying on his fellow army veterans in Stefan Ruzowitzky’s Hinterland, which releases Friday on VOD.

This is 1920 Vienna, but it looks a lot like Tim Burton’s Gotham. Using digital technology, Ruzowitzky immerses his cast in a highly expressionistic urban jungle, inspired by Dr. Caligari and other silent films of the era. It looks amazing, like film noir from Hell, in a good way.

However, Hinterland also has a narrative of some substance to go with its stunning visuals, unlike many would-be dazzlers that forget the other elements that produce a worthy film. Perg has a real case to investigate and macabre clues to uncover, as further horrific murders are discovered.

Initially, the only one who really wants him involved in the case is Dr. Theresa Korner, a woman as you might have guessed, whom the police commissar reluctantly promoted to her current medical examiner position during the War, simply because there were no qualified men at the time. Yet, she also remembers first-hand Perg’s brilliance during previous cases.

Ruzowitzky does not ring this bell obsessively, but it is pretty easy to see from their treatment from interwar society why many of Perg’s fellow veterans would be radicalized by the National Socialists. Ruzowitzky also nicely shows the not-so cold war being waged between the Communists and various nationalists in the city’s streets and back alleys. Ironically, even though a great deal of the picture was digitally generated, Hinterland has a keen sense of time and place.

No Man of God: The Bill & Ted Show

One could make a good case celebrated FBI profiler Bill Hagmaier deserves a share of the royalties from books and movies like Silence of the Lambs and The Alienist. He was one of the first to pick the brains of serial killers to glean insights to help catch serial killers, starting with one of the most notorious predators ever: Ted Bundy. Amber Sealey dramatizes the Bill & Ted sessions in No Man of God, which releases today in theaters and on VOD.

In 1984, Pres. Reagan launched the FBI’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, which pioneered the profiling techniques that are now so familiar on TV procedurals. Hagmaier was a junior, but up-and-coming special agent. He basically drew the short straw with Bundy, who had expressed endless contempt for the Bureau. Nevertheless, the devout Hagmaier somehow won Bundy over with earnestness.

At first, Hagmaier just tried to engage Bundy to see what he might reveal about the serial killer mentality. Yet, the agent clearly hoped Bundy would eventually confess to more of the murders he was suspected of, giving more families closure. However, time becomes an issue when the governor signs an expedited seven-day death warrant for Bundy.

There is no horror in No Man of God and virtually no thriller elements. It really is verbal cat-and-mouse game, sort of in the moody tradition of Playhouse 90 and Reginald Rose. It is also a better film than the lurid and muddled Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, but Zac Efron still deserves credit for his go-for-broke performance as Bundy.

Fantasia ’21: Midnight

This Korean film could complete a “see-no-evil-hear-no-evil-speak-no-evil” trilogy with Wait Until Dark and Mute Witness, while maintaining the same level of quality.  In this case, Kyung-mi and her mother are deaf. They are accustomed to being patronized and dismissed by society, but that makes them particularly vulnerable when a serial killer starts stalking them. However, the women are more resilient than he expects in screenwriter-director Kwon Oh-seung’s thriller, Midnight, which screens in-person again tomorrow, as part of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

Kyung-mi gets by okay as a special sign-language customer service rep, living with her seamstress mother. Unfortunately, after a late night at work, they accidentally witness a masked serial killer abducting So Yong, the younger sister of her guardian, Jong Tak, a tough cop recently discharged from military service. Initially, the predatory Do-shik tries to dispose of them at the scene, but when they manage to summon the dumb local coppers, he successfully dons his mild-mannered civilian persona, claiming to also be a concerned family member of a missing person. Unfortunately, this allows him to get close to enough to Kyung-mi and her mother to learn things like their address.

Baby-faced Do-shik (chillingly portrayed by Wi Ha-jun) is one of the creepiest, most monstrous serial killers seen on film, since maybe the contemporary Korean milestones, The Chaser and I Saw the Devil. There is also a good deal of social commentary in Midnight, regarding the way the cops and society in general treat the deaf, but instead of detracting from the suspense, it actually intensifies it.

Jin Ki-joo is absolutely terrific as Kyung-mi. Her performance is scrupulously realistic and not the slightest bit cringey. Likewise, Gil Hae-yeon is totally down-to-earth and believably terrified as her mother. Wi just radiates pure, clammy evil as Do-shik, while Park Hoon is quite compelling as the conflicted and guilt-ridden Jong Tak.

The Columnist: Hunting Trolls IRL

Femke Boot aspires to be something like a Dutch Anna Quinlan. She dispenses soccer mom-feminism in her newspaper column and also happens to have a novel under-contract. Unfortunately, virulent internet trolls have gotten into her head, but she will violently raise the stakes in Ivo van Aart’s The Columnist, which releases today in virtual theaters and on VOD.

The comments Boot gets on social media are truly vicious, but she cannot help reading and internalizing them. Sometimes, she even gets death threats, but the cops will not do anything about them. It turns out one of the trolls is even her two-faced next-door neighbor. Eventually, the rage drives her to murder and before long she is a full-blown serial killer. As an added bonus, her killing spree cures her of her writer’s block. However, she had a signature right from the start: severing and keeping a middle finger from each of her victims.

That’s the thing—Boot gets really good at killing, really quickly. It almost makes you wonder who is really supposed to bear the brunt of the film’s satire. However, Daan Windhorst’s screenplay lacks the subversive subtlety of Stacy Title’s masterful The Last Supper. Instead, The Columnist largely comes across as a relatively game attempt to exploit well-founded social media anxiety for genre thrills.

Killer Among Us

It is a case transparently inspired by the Grim Sleeper in LA and the Pig Farmer Killer in Canada, but with extra political score settling thrown in to dehumanize everyone director-co-writer Charlie Scharfman disagrees with. You see, the killer identifies with rightwing talk radio, except presumably the law & order advocacy and a steadfast belief in the sanctity of life. Expect no subtlety and very little suspense from Scharfman’s Killer Among Us, which releases this Friday on VOD.

Alisha Parks is a rookie cop, who finds herself marginalized within her own department, while getting the cold shoulder from her urban community. She seems bitterly resigned to this situation, until one night she witnesses a man apparently pushing a woozy sex worker back into his car. Rather suspiciously, he left a syringe behind, but the top brass at her precinct just don’t care. However, the veteran Sgt. Corbucci agrees to work the case with her. With his backing, she learns the victim is actually a minor—a fact that starts to change things. She also discovers a potential pattern of disappearances.

Supposedly, the psycho killer is a rabid super-patriot, but he is also a strip club regular. Basically, he is everything Scharfman needs him to be to best serve his spiteful worldview. Frankly, nothing the killer does in the second two acts makes an iota of sense, but his erratic decisions sure make it easier to catch him.