If a movie doesn't live up to your expectations, if it goes in a direction you didn't want it to go, is it the film's fault or your own? If this movie were based on a book that you had never read and never heard of, but it just didn't follow a plot that you imagined it would use, then do you have the right to be crestfallen? Or should you just accept it for what it is?
I saw the trailer for I Am Not A Serial Killer during the height of my listening to true crime podcasts, most notably My Favorite Murder and Sword and Scale. While grappling with my own thoughts of why I love hearing stories about murder, while harboring a blood phobia, the trailer for this 2016 film made me smile widely upon watching it.
In the trailer scenes are edited together that paint the picture of a typical teenage outcast who's family owns a funeral home, but he's been clinically diagnosed as a psychopath. This throws a wrench into the once familiar equation. In the movies being a straight up psychopath makes you the bad guy, or at best, a tragic figure. This film might actually be making the psychopath the hero.
The teen in question, named John, played by Max Records of Where the Wild Things Are, looks like a Wiley Wiggins, Kieran Culkin, or Rory Culkin type. John goes through life saying morbid stuff to people, and being easy breezy in the family morgue, but when a string of unsolved murders plagues his Midwestern town he takes keen interest. John notices someone lurking about and tries to investigate. Maybe it takes one to know one?
This concept was really intriguing to me. I thought of all the dramatic possibilities; that a young kid, who is dangerously close to being a killer himself, will use his know-how to figure out the crime. Maybe he's even suspected of the murder since he's the town weirdo. Maybe his own lack of emotional attachment will get in the way of solving the crime, or maybe it will be to his advantage.
Right now you can watch I Am Not a Serial Killer on Netflix. I just watched it, and I am sadly underwhelmed. The main reason for this is the supernatural twist.
Here is where it gets really really spoiler-y:
Christopher Lloyd plays an old man named Crowley (is that name old-man-y enough for you?) who lives with his beloved wife next door to the funeral home that John lives in. In the trailer there are some indicators that Crowley's the killer, but there are more indicators that he is in danger (like saying how it's a great day to be alive while suspenseful music plays).
In the trailer the potential killer is presented as a man in a blue parka lurking about. In the film this idea comes to fruition. John thinks he's on to the killer because he keeps seeing that blue parka guy wondering around looking shady as hell. When John spies the guy awkwardly talking to Crowley, inviting himself ice fishing with him, John follows the pair to see what will happen. Later, the blue parka guy misses a good opportunity to chainsaw Crowley as he cuts a hole in the ice for him. He puts the chainsaw down, and then brandishes a knife while Crowley's back is turned. We all think this nice old man is toast, until Crowley spins around and somehow spears his own arm through the guy's chest! At first I'm thinking, ".....great... self... defense?" But we see from afar that Crowley rips the lungs out of him and possibly eats them. It's not clear exactly how it goes down, but it is definitely supernatural.
The truth is that Crowley is the killer! BUT he is some kind of supernatural alien beast who needs to feed on the organs and body parts of living people to repair aging parts of himself. Isn't that like Tooms from the X-Files?
This revelation, which happens pretty quickly in the film, was disappointing. I would have LOVED it if Crowley were just this freaky old serial killer - completely human - and John had to deal with realizing he A) bonded with this old man because they are alike in their psychopathy, further making him question his own potential to kill B) stop this old man from killing everyone in the neighborhood, and C) has to make sure the crimes aren't pinned on himself since he's so outwardly strange, unlike the kindly old man.
However, that is not exactly how it goes.
The rest of the film involves John following Crowley, unable to stop him from killing anyone because he's a frekin alien. John also has an absent father, a cynical sister, a nervous mother, a pretty girl who likes him, a bully who is unnecessarily menacing, and a therapist who is unrealistically cool. John has to deal with all of this while trying to outwit an alien being, and save the town.
What kills me is that at the start of the film, people are talking about how the victims looked like they were attacked by some kind of terrifying animal. John makes an astute comment that stories of werewolves and vampires were created because of serial killers. I have also heard this theory, and to elaborate more on the topic, people back in the Middle Ages couldn't conceive that a human could wreck so much havoc on random innocent people, therefore unseen mythical monsters were blamed, and the people who committed the heinous crimes were never stopped. The concept of a serial killer didn't exist until the 19th century. That being said, I hate that the killer ended up being a literal mythical beast. A cool reference to how depraved humanity can be was actually a telegraphed foreshadowing.
I wish I could say it was a tale of two psychopaths with one beating him at his own game. Instead one of them was an alien body-snatcher who fell in love with a human woman and would kill to stay alive for her. The other, a boy who's been convinced by his family, school, and doctor that he's a ticking time bomb, only to find out that despite his pervasive violent thoughts and the constitution to work in the morgue, he doesn't like hurting people at all. John ultimately learned that he has way more compassion for people than his diagnosis made him and others believe.
And I won't completely spoil the ending for you.
It's an interesting story. I can't get too mad at the director since the film is an adaptation from a novel of the same name. Then I just feel silly getting sore with the author of the book too. You can write whatever you want. It is what it is, it's just not what I expected.
If the movie I just pitched exists out there, let me know!
