The Killer Inside Me is a story set in Texas is about a local sheriff Lou (Casey Affleck) who is a compulsive lady killer. He woos women and just about when he has to commit to them, he kills them. Adapted from a 1952 Jim Thompson novel of the same name, the movie is a weak tale of a psychopath's obsession with women.
The movie is so short of substance I've little else to add to what I have said in the first paragraph. To make matters worse, inherently weak movies like these have something cool about them - maybe the cinematography, one mind-numbing performance or maybe just any one single scene. The Killer Inside Me has nothing.
For a movie that's about sex crimes, even the sex is underwhelming. Jessica Alba and Kate Hudson sleepwalk through their roles getting spanked even as the movie drags from one murder to another. Stanley Kubrick had mentioned once that the story of The Killer Inside Me 'was the most chilling and believable first person story of a criminally warped mind' that he had encountered. Well, let's just say for his sake we all should be relieved that he didn't live to see what director Michael Winterbottom dished out under the garb of a movie. Some of the violence that is unleashed on women in the movie is downright contemptuous. The only thing that soothes your senses as a viewer is the bunch of the good old country tracks that the movie's soundtrack consists of. I can't help but mention here that as I am writing this Faron Young's Shame on you... in wafting through my head.
The movie actually does have a story that once had even Quentin Tarantino interested in leading the project but it got shelved. The sad thing is Winterbottom's version leaves us to wonder about one simple question - If the story of a novel is so good, how can it be so bad on film ? This 2010 version might not answer the question directly but does signify how bad it could get.
Rating: 2/10
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