When a script has passed through multiple hands over an almost 20-year period, one assumes it must have something magnetic enough to keep it within the Hollywood ecosystem and out of the trash. Of course, it’s also assumed that there’s probably something a little cursed about it too but when it finally does get made, the curiosity factor is sky high. Psycho Killer, written in the mid-2000s by Seven’s Andrew Kevin Walker, has had its share of almosts over the years. In 2009, Fred Durst was set to direct. In 2010, Eli Roth was set to produce. In 2011, production was set to begin. In 2015, it was supposed to get German funding. But each iteration found a snag, and it took until 2023 for the film to finally get made.
Three years later, it’s now finally getting released by 20th, AKA Disney, with longtime producer Gavin Polone making his directorial debut, an answer to the question of “Why this?’ quietly arriving in 1,000-plus cinemas.
Walker’s ingenious script for Seven didn’t quite lead to the career many expected (his screenplay for 8mm was so butchered he disowned it; he had a hand in 2010’s regrettable Wolfman; his Covid-shot crime thriller Windfall was a bust) but maybe in the immediate period after his 1995 breakout another serial killer thriller with his name attached would have seemed like an obvious win. But what’s so odd about Psycho Killer is that even when the script initially emerged online, back in 2007, it would have seemed like an entirely inessential B-movie then, the kind of film that might have been made on the cheap and released straight to unrated DVD.
It’s then hard to understand why a film like Psycho Killer is getting any form of theatrical release at this particularly tough moment, as studios continue to lose millions trying, and mostly failing, to lure audiences away from their many screens. I kept waiting to get it, to find something distinctive that might explain why it was granted the kind of studio rollout most genre film-makers would dream of, but I left baffled. There might be just about enough competence to Polone’s film-making to ensure this won’t be the worst horror film of the year, but it’ll probably be the least necessary.
It’s a strange beast in that it’s too straightforward and dumb to work as a crime thriller yet too dull and scare-free to work as a horror, awkwardly falling somewhere in-between. The film begins as the US finds itself in the grip of a mask-wearing serial killer (wrestler turned actor James Preston Rogers), a mysterious figure making his way across the country leaving a trail of carnage in his wake. His victims are found surrounded by satanic symbols and messages, yet the FBI remains clueless and laughably incompetent in a way that actually makes it briefly seem like a very 2026 movie after all. After her husband is murdered, police officer Jane (Barbarian’s Georgina Campbell) becomes obsessed with tracking him down.
We follow our protagonist and antagonist in almost equal measure, like switching between video-game characters, both written with about the same depth. We’re being led towards something, a reveal that will explain the spree, teased at by the killer’s obsession with crimes from the past, but when the puzzle pieces fall into place, it’s with a thud. There’s nothing revelatory enough to justify the slog it took to get there, despite a couple of divertingly punchy moments (there’s a kinetic hotel-room fight and a malevolently hammy Malcolm McDowell to briefly wake us up). I assume it’s the killer’s ambitious ultimate last-act plan that kept people coming back to the script, but the rushed finale plays out with such a shrug, complete with an expected, by-the-book jump-scare coda, that even those who had once coveted this story will surely see this as a failure, entirely separate from their vision of what this could be.
It’s just a third-rate X-Files episode but without the considerable pull of Mulder and Scully, Campbell’s generic grieving obsessive unable to really command. Her quest might be fruitful but the film’s arduous journey out of development hell and into cinemas is without reward for those involved and those of us left watching. Psycho Killer is as hopelessly bland as its title.
Psycho Killer is out in US cinemas now and in the UK and Australia at a later date
