The Killer Inside Me is a deeply unpleasant movie which is hard to watch and impossible to enjoy.
Michael Winterbottom’s film is based on the 1952 crime noir novel by Jim Thompson and a remake of a badly received 1976 movie of the same name.
It is the squalid tale of Lou Ford (Casey Affleck) a small-town cop and unrepentant killer. His love of classical music and clean cut exterior is sharply at odds with the dark sadistic nature within.
Affleck’s mumbled drawl is so pronounced that many of his lines are as incomprehensible as his actions.
He knows he’s mentally sick but just can’t help himself. Being a young witness to the beatings his mother was (apparently willingly) subjected to makes him numb to the suffering he causes others.
Spade Cooley’s country swing number ‘Shame On You’ is used as a kind of ironic signature tune but his calculated cruelty goes way beyond being merely shameful.
His colleagues are not the brightest bunch so he even gets away with killing a man while visiting him in a prison cell (they think it was suicide…doh!).
I haven’t read the novel but it is no surprise to learn that was written as a first person narrative, with Thompson attempting to unravel what goes on in the mind of a sadistic killer. Continue reading
