“The killer inside me” – (109 minutes, USA 2010, rated R)
“I got one foot on both sides of the fence, I can’t move, I can’t jump.”
Lou Ford (Casey Affleck) is a Sheriff’s deputy in a small town in West Texas, easy going and friendly with all. As a matter of fact, Lou does a lot of favors. He takes care of his community, no fuss, no muss.
That is until the Sheriff (Tom Bower), a good old boy drowning despair in alcohol, asks him to tell a hooker living on the outskirts of town to get a move on. Joyce (Jessica Alba) doesn’t take the news well, and slaps, then hits Lou. This exchange triggers something in him that he buried many years earlier. He gives Joyce a whipping with his belt and there starts a relationship based on animal lust and forceful, dangerous sex.
This also presents Lou with an opportunity to settle old scores. As he put it himself, “the problem with growing up in a small town is that everyone thinks they know you”.
“The killer inside me” received mixed reactions from critics and audiences. No wonder: it is one of the most accurate portrayals of a sociopathic character ever filmed, and the violence, particularly when directed at women, is disturbingly realistic.
See the trailer here:
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As Lou’s plan for revenge keep taking strange turns to correct mistakes, people close to him die. He uses them as sacrificial pieces in this game he plays with the suspicious D.A. (Simon Baker), who sees Lou for what he is.
The film is based on the book of the same title, written by Jim Thompson in 1952. Thompson wrote 30 novels, or so, mostly between the ‘40s and ‘50s, but never quite succeeded. Most movie adaptations of his books were made after his death in 1977, and there were quite a few: “the grifters“, “the getaway”, Bertrand Tavernier’s “coup de torchon” based on “Pop. 1280” and more.
Thompson’s problem may well have been that he was too raw for his times.
This version of “the killer inside me” is maybe more “detached” than raw, but in time I hope it will gain more approval. This is a stylish period piece as well as a thriller, leisurely paced like the characters’ (uneven) Texas drawl, with an incredible performance at its center by Casey Affleck.
His interpretation of Lou Ford, when considered next to his portrayal of Robert Ford in “the assassination of Jesse James[…]” reveals range and depth. Fascinating and disturbing.
“The killer inside me” packs an intense psychological wallop as a movie which shows that horror does happen on beautiful, sunny afternoons, when you are lulled into expecting it least. While vastly different from “Wolf Creek”, it hits you in the same places, and into the bone
“The killer inside me” gets 4 jellybeans.
Disturbing, disquieting and clinical. Yes, it would turn people off. Are you planning a review of wolf creek?
Thank you for visiting. I found it very disturbing. There were a couple of scenes that were extremely difficult for me to sit through.
Yes, a review of Wolf Creek will be coming.