I Am Not a Serial Killer (2016)

Let's be realistic.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Blistering performances.

A teenager who works at an undertakers with his family, has dark obsessions with death as well as displaying sociopathic tendencies. When he discovers that one of his elderly neighbours is a serial killer responsible for a recent spare of violent murders, its sets off confusing dilemmas within him.I Am Not a Serial Killer is certainly a film which approaches fairly typical material in a left-of-centre manner. Like seems to be the current vogue, of which I am not entirely keen on I have to say, it goes for a tone of downbeat realism. This allows the drama of the story to be played out with some seriousness, helped quite a bit by a strong acting performance from Max Records in the central role and with good support from the rest of the cast, including some fine work from Christopher Lloyd as the killer. Consequently, this qualifies more as a dramatic psychological thriller that eventually goes full-on into horror territory, as opposed to a traditionally suspenseful serial killer film. It does have to be said though, that the ending in which events take a turn into creature feature territory definitely had me surprised. It was an ending which I am guessing may be a little divisive with audiences but I certainly appreciated its oddball unpredictableness. The movie as a whole is very deliberately paced and with its wintry north Midwest setting it has a pretty sustained gloominess which, while it worked within the framework of the story it was telling, definitely didn't accentuate its entertainment value for me I have to admit. So I have mixed feelings overall about this one, as while I found it to suffer a bit from the recent cinematic trend for the downbeat, I also recognise that it did have a few unusual ideas up its sleeve as well.

I didn't expect much from this movie from watching the trailer. But there are surprises, twists and tension in this movie. It has its creepy moments but it isn't exactly a horror movie. I think the comparisons to Donnie Drako are justified. It does feel like a classical movie. And you do get to feel for the characters. We enjoyed this.

In spite of its good casting choices, I Am Not A Serial Killer, fails to impress.This is a "dead on arrival", B grade horror thriller, that appropriately starts and ends in a morgue. Its a film that's short on both horror and thrills. Its pacing is far, far too languid to really hold even the most patient of viewers attention. This is exacerbated by a rather gloomy, austere atmosphere that permeates the whole film, further sucking it dry of any kind of vitality and energy. The casting choices are good and for a low budget flick the acting is for the most part, pretty decent. Its simply a shame the script for this film was not more energetic, infused with pace, dread and a sense of foreboding.All key ingredients in any decent scare fest.Four out of ten from me.

"I Am Not a Serial Killer" is a strange stab at a young adult novel style treatment of gritty true crime, psychological thriller stories, which makes the ill-judged leap, far too late, into total supernatural fantasy. It tries to be all serious and morbid – at least until the ending – but is really just another in the scores of teen fiction made into film with a super-powered adolescent. Jut in this case, the superpower is a personality disorder.John is a teenage boy who has been "diagnosed" with antisocial personality disorder by his psychologist, despite the fact that, as non-medical doctors, psychologists cannot diagnose people with anything: that's a psychiatrist's job. He follows rules he has set himself to prevent him from ever harming anybody, though of course, if he were really a sociopath, he would have no use for such "rules". The movie never explains why this particular character is so committed to not hurting anyone; we're supposed to take it as a matter of course.This is unlikely enough, but John also works at his family's funeral home. He's a mortician who knows the ins and outs of embalming and dressing the dead for burial. I'm fairly certain it is illegal for someone to work as a mortician without training and a license, which John could not have as he is only a teenager. Come to that, I'm also fairly certain someone too young to buy a packet of cigarettes would not be legally allowed to scrub your dead grandmother's naked body, and replace her blood with embalming fluid.The hits just keep on coming, as John finds his own town apparently harbouring a serial killer. Guess who finds out the killer's identity, after the police are singularly unable to? This is all the stuff of teen fiction: the young may not notice how far-fetched all these coincidences and details are. But the handling of the material also tries to be gritty and disturbing, which is undercut by the silliness of it."I Am Not a Serial Killer" is, ultimately, a story which tries to be two different things and succeeds at neither. For a movie that seems to be trying so hard to be serious and disturbing, the ending has to be seen to be believed. You'd laugh if the one and a half hour beforehand hadn't so resolutely sucked the jollity out of you.