‘this ain’t no American Psycho’
British director Michael Winterbottom has never been one to shy away from controversy and tackling source material that most film makers would shy away from. He was last met with angry headlines with his film 9 Songs, which was widely proclaimed to be the most sexually explicit mainstream film of all time. His latest, the crime noir ‘The Killer Inside Me’; is based on Jim Thompson’s 1950s novel of the same name. At its time of release it was described as “one of the most blistering and uncompromising crime novels ever written”. I cannot clarify that statement as I’m yet to read it, but Winterbottom must have delivered a faithful adaptation as blistering and uncompromising are two adjectives very well suited to this production.
The film was reportedly booed at Cannes film festival this year and it is understandable to see why. I left the cinema with a guttural hatred towards the film; I found it repulsive, upsetting, unrelenting and irredeemable. However, after some short meditation on what I had witnessed I realised these feelings were not towards the film, but towards the films main character. Lou Ford is the deputy sheriff of a small town in south Texas; he is also a psychopathic and brutal murderer. To reveal more of the plot is arbitrary as the film rises and in many opinions falls on that character, played masterfully by Casey Affleck.
Unlike the cinematic bogeymen of recent decades such as Norman Bates, Hannibal Lector, Ghost Face (Scream) and John Kramer (Jigsaw) Lou Ford is not an anti-hero. The audience never cheer him on, or wait for his next kill. He is a deeply disturbing figure; a seemingly gentle, quiet southern gentleman who speaks in friendly clichés but harbours and at times unleashes a savage, sadomasochistic, murderous persona. The film is a character study which gives the audience no comfort, no relief and no let up right until its morbid final scene.
Despite its subject matter, this is not a horror or thriller, its heart is routed in the classic hard-boiled crime drama that dominated Hollywood in the 1940s and 50s. It relocates the genres setting, usually enlaced within the murky depths of urban America to an orange tinted, heat stricken, and southern American town. It is one in a series of films such as ‘No Country for Old Men’ and ‘There Will be Blood’ that find a darker side to the seemingly quiet sleepy rural parts of America. Winterbottom’s direction perfectly captures both a suitable tone and setting for the film, complimented with an excellent soundtrack with mixes ominous foreboding strings with ‘hick’ country and western music.
Supporting Affleck are excellent performances by both Jessica Alba and Kate Hudson. The film’s most crucial plot progression occurs when Ford is asked to pay off Alba’s character, a prostitute named Joyce Lakeland. She has been sleeping with the son of a union leader, and Ford’s money is meant to encourage her to leave town to save the families reputation. Despite being in a seemingly healthy relationship with Hudson’s character, he begins a passionate and consensually sadomasochistic relationship with Joyce. This takes a sour turn when, for no clear reason Ford beats Joyce to the brink of death in one of the most shocking depictions of cinematic violence I’ve ever witnessed. To cover his tracks he has to resort to fabricated alibis which inevitably lead to more violence and even darker turns.
Typically with any film that breaches the comforts we are used to in mainstream cinema the film has been met with much condemnation. Winterbottom has been labelled misogynistic due to his unflinching and protracting depictions of violence against women. Whilst it is unsurprising, it isn’t necessarily a fair claim. In the past two years audiences have laughed and cheered whilst a camera ogles a topless woman before she is stabbed to death by a mad man (My Bloody Valentine) and yet another naked woman is sprayed with nitrous oxide until she is frozen to death (Saw 3). It isn’t just the horror genre either, recently the awful film The Bounty Hunter depicted Jennifer Aniston been chucked around, handcuffed and locked in car trunks all in the name of ‘comedy’. Whenever cinematic violence fails to fall into the tropes familiar to audiences there is an outrage. The scene in which Ford attacks Joyce is a protracted and shocking scene. One that made me flinch, look away and it will linger with me long after the credits roll. However, in depicting such violent attacks in a realistic setting how else should such brutal acts feel to witness? The disgusted reaction Winterbottom has generated in this scene is a tribute to his directorial skills, harrowing, shocking but necessary. Instead of exploiting and sexualising women as countless horror and crime films do, he unveils the horror within such acts.
It isn’t just the violence that is unsettling; it’s the overall tone of the film. Fords voiceover with his gentle southern tones shows how far removed he is from the horror he unleashes. Affleck deserves recognition for his startling performance but such daring efforts are rarely rewarded in the political hierarchy in Hollywood. Winterbottom provides some back-story looking back at Fords childhood in which he was subjected to severe abuse, but never enough to allow the audience to empathise with him. The lack of motive means the films plot and Ford has an ambiguity that refuses to provide any simple explanation or reason for his violence.
Usually this review would be followed by a verdict and a number star. The Killer Inside Me is not a film that can be so easily quantified in its rating. It is not a film for everyone and not a film I find easy to recommend. It will divide audiences just as it has divided critics. It is however a startling, upsetting, and highly effective crime story. Never entertaining but always tense, it is the most unnerving, and memorable cinematic experience so far this year.
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