The very Sordid Killer Inside Me

The experience I had this evening was a combination of shock, horror and surprise I haven’t felt since I saw Last House on the Left and maybe even Funny Games. The film I saw was an investigation into the mind of a killer, into its emotional detachment and unreasonable violent solutions to problems. I heard the movie was violent (it didn’t have an 18+ rating for nothing) and that people had walked out of the screening at the Sundance festival. There were even rumours that leading actress Jessica Alba had walked out of a screening, though that rumour is completely unsubstantiated and seems a bit unlikely to me.

At times the scenes of violence approach the intense unpleasantness of Irreversible, especially when we see the continuous deterioration of a woman’s face when Lou Ford keeps beating on it, though it never fully goes to the same lengths. What stopped that happening for me was the luscious period design (it is set in Oklahoma in the fifties) and the odd hints of extremely black comedy in it. This comedy had taken me aback when it first occurred but especially after a gruesome murder near the end of the film that was somewhat unexpected. A comedic western song accompanying a chase follows this last mentioned scene of violence, which gave it an incredibly strange slapstick moment, especially when Lou slips on the urine of the person he just killed and is met with an eerie post-mortem smile. This moment was what reminded me of Last House on the Left, the very sordid combination of sincerely meant comedy and authentic feeling violence when a slapstick moment follows a very nasty gang rape. Winterbottom, the director, said that he meant this strange transition from horror to comedy to reflect the mentally confused state of mind that the main character finds himself in together with his inability to connect consequences to his actions.

It must be said that Lou Ford, the main character, is extremely well played by Casey Affleck, who has had experience with playing loathsome but internally troubled figures in The Assassination of Jesse James and Gone Baby Gone. He plays a man who seems very detached, who hardly thinks twice about brutally beating the woman he loves to serve his purposes in an odd convoluted way. Kate Hudson and Jessica Alba seem odd choices for the two women characters in this quite daring project, but they both played aptly, though their beauty somehow seems a bit out of place in this gruesome story of sadism and masochism.

What is fascinating though, is the reaction this film has received from audiences everywhere, even the one that I sat in. A woman couldn’t stop asking the director why there had to be so much violence in it, even though this question seemed pointless after the director had explained that he wanted to make a film where the violence doesn’t just pass quickly as a way to advance the story easily as it does in most films. He wanted to make a film where the viewer is extremely aware of the horrible reality of what is happening on screen and I admire this sentiment very much. It is only too easy to make a film in what now seems to be the Tarantino-style film making where violence is extreme but the momentum of the film never gives us time to dwell on it. It is because of this that I allowed a comparison with Funny Games although The Killer Inside Me seems a bit too confused to tackle this problem directly. This is also the reason why I think this film is not completely successful. It seems unsure of what it wants to be, a black comedy, a commentary on violence, a psychological investigation into the psychopathic mind or a film-noir pastiche. Its ambitions are extremely laudable but not focussed enough. A fascinating try, though I would rather recommend seeing a film by Michael Haneke.