Low budget attempt at the "murdermentary" genre, that suffers from an overstuffed script and generaly below average acting.
The idea is that a documentary is being put together about a serial killer. FBI Agents, detectives, forensic specialist, psychologists and more, are shown commenting on and discussing the main character, a serial killer who raped, murdered and tortured numerous women over a 10 year period.
Interspersed with all of this are homemade videos found by detectives, that the killer himself made.
The best thing I can say about the film is that it has moments of stark brutality, maybe not enough of them, as they're really the only thing that works. The ending also has a pretty solid stomach punch moment.
Other then that though, there really isn't much here to sink your teeth into in any serious manner.
I've mentioned before about movies like this and how you'd think this would be an easy way to cover for lesser actors, having them be a part of a documentary style film, but really it just makes the sub par acting stand out more. When a dude is just looking straight into a camera and acting, there's nothing to distract you from his performance.
The killers footage is also a big negative. Most of it is grainy or distorted, which makes the longer scenes centered around him pretty hard to watch and get in to. Other moments just seem out of place. A dude sneaking into a house to kill people, all the while holding a camera, doesn't come across as scary as much as it comes across as distracting.
The last major flaw is the movies desire to build a story bigger than just the tapes of a sadistic killer. They give him what I found to be a silly mythology about his ability to create different profiles and what not. I found it silly but I could accept it. What I couldn't accept was an absurd plot twist that involved a framed cop and 9/11. At that point the filmmakers were just creating way too much fucking story. And bad story at that.
There's very little nudity and no titillation whatsoever.
In the end it's a fair idea, that gets wrapped up in too much plot without enough quality acting, and not much gore to speak of. The biggest criticism I can give the movie is that it's just sort of boring.
Poughkeepsie? More like PoughDontsee.
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