Review: The Killer Inside Me

Before watching Michael Winterbottom's latest film, The Killer Inside Me, I'd already heard a lot of hubub about its violent content and especially the domestic abuse that the lead character, played by Casey Affleck, inflicts on the two central female protagonists. I personally don't have a problem with film violence as long as its contextual, for example the sexual violence in The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo was gruesome but it advanced the plot and allowed one of the characters to grow. But in The Killer Inside Me it seems the violence comes ahead of what little plot there is. Affleck's deputy sherrif Lou begins a very violent relationship with a prostitute after he tries to convince her to leave the area, he also is trying to get revenge on Chester Conway, the man who he believed killed his adopted brother. He decides to agree with Joy the prostitute to blackmail Conway's son by having the two engage in a relationship and then inform Chester but Lou double crosses Joy and violently beats her almost to death. He then tries to cover up his tracks by killing more and more people while at the same time a county attorney is trying to get to the truth of the murders.

There's no denying that the acting in The Killer Inside Me, is above par. Casey Affleck is a terrific actor which he proved in The Assassination of Jesse James and here gives a captivating performance, is just a shame that he didn't have much material to work with. Again it is distrubing watching him beat both Jessica Alba (as the prostitute) and Kate Hudson (as his girlfriend) but at the same time both actresses are able to come out of their comfort zones and do something a bit different from the romcom tat they usually star in. For me though the star of the show is Brent Briscoe as the bum who bribes Lou after working out what he's done. At the end of the day though this is a very thinly plotted film in which the women are beaten death while the male deaths are either very quick or seen off-screen. Its a film that goes for shock value over genuine drama and comes off rather tacky, it is a shame because there's a good film in there somewhere but Winterbottom would just rather concentrate on sensationalism than drama.