Well, this was certainly the hardest movie to watch so far. It reminded me a lot of Man Bites Dog. Becky (Tonya Arnold) has left her abusive husband to move in with her brother, Otis (Tom Towles), and his friend, Henry (Micheal Rooker), in Chicago. Otis is a gas station attendant and part-time weed dealer while Henry picks up odd jobs and uses them as cover to murder women. Henry begins to groom Otis to help him in his murder sprees but Otis is too undisciplined for that to last long. Becky just wants to be a shampoo girl and is blissfully unaware of what Otis and Henry do in the evenings.
This is a stark look at people who live on the fringes. Becky is poor and been abused one way or another since she was 13. Otis is stupid and has no concept of boundaries, happily opportunistic with regards to sex, violence, and petty crime. Henry is a true psychopath, constantly searching for victims, smart enough to change his methods with every one to keep the police from linking them together, and completely incapable of truly feeling any emotion.
This film doesn't have a lot of gore and you don't really see Henry torture any of the victims, just their corpses after, except for the home invasion which is very graphic but still one step removed by use of a camcorder. Because we never see Henry commit any of the most violent acts, it's easier to maintain sympathy for the character, a very dangerous thing. I would think this needs to make a resurgence as one of the top horror films about serial killers. It's currently streaming on Amazon Prime.
No comments:
Post a Comment