Coming too late to be very effective, I Am Not a Serial Killer is a lovely little independent horror flick to chill your Friday the 13th date night. While other (better) throwback examples have stolen our collective hearts lately -- I'm thinking of Stranger Things on Netflix and It Follows -- there's a lot to be said for a creepy, atmospheric '80s-style horror side show with a lot on its mind but a small budget that forces a tight focus.
The film concerns various takes on death in an obscure Midwestern town: Your neighbor is not your typical suburbanite, and his hunger may kill you. We meet a young sociopath (Max Records, a little grown up from Where the Wild Things Are) as he works in his mother's funeral home. Whether his occupation sates or starves his homicidal impulses is left unresolved as a string of grisly murders in town attract his curiosity. Each murder victim is left without an organ, and a black oily goo has been dribbled nearby (so, I guess, The Mummy meets X-Files?). Enter Christopher Lloyd in his best role in years, as the aged neighbor, whose proximity to these murders piques our protagonist's suspicions.
The plot is so thin, I don't really want to spoil it for you. Just know that it's not terribly original and the mystery is almost painfully short-lived. But the joys of this picture are not in such conventional elements, but rather in the film's character study, sense of place, and meditation on desire. Both Records and Lloyd deliver satiating performances of people with instinctual hunger, who, while sympathetic at times, are no less horrifying in practice. Once they are pitted against each other, it's only a matter of time before the icky, sticky, final confrontation that reveals the supernatural yet surprisingly grounded monster inside us all.
So if you're looking for that creepy little slow-burner to chill you out when the moon is full tonight, you could do a lot worse than this one. And watching a grizzled Christopher Lloyd actually acting is not something you want to miss.
IMDb: I Am Not a Serial Killer
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