The New York Ripper (1982) Review
The New York Ripper (1982) rates 3 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Lucio Fulci made a giallo about a killer who murders women and quacks like a duck on the telephone. It was seized in Britain, refused certification…
Tag: Serial Killer
The serial killer story is an investigation story, and its quality depends entirely on the investigator. This tag collects reviews of serial killer films and the craft of writing a hunt that stays credible.
1980sHenry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) Review
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Made for around a hundred thousand dollars, shelved for four years over its rating, and still the film that other films about this subject…
2010sMindhunter – “Episode 1” (S1E1, 2017) Review
Mindhunter's pilot rates 9 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Fincher directs an hour about a hostage negotiation failing and a man discovering that the vocabulary he has been given is inadequate. Almost nothing happens, there is no killer…
1980sAmerican Psycho (2000) Review
American Psycho (2000) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Mary Harron read a novel everybody called unfilmable and found the comedy in it. Made for seven million dollars, mostly in Toronto, and it is far funnier and…
1990sSe7en (1995) Review
Se7en (1995) rates 9 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. The rain never stops, the city has no name, and the killer wins exactly as planned. Fincher's second film, made after a first one he has disowned.
AdaptationThe Silence of the Lambs
FBI trainee Clarice Starling and the imprisoned cannibal Hannibal Lecter in a duel of intellect and exposure. Tense, intelligent, and genuinely frightening, with one of fiction's most magnetic monsters. A colder and more psychologically granular book than even its Oscar-sweeping…
Book ReviewsAmerican Psycho
Narrated by Patrick Bateman, who describes murders and designer labels in the same flat voice, this is a genuinely sharp satire of consumer emptiness and an extreme experiment in unreliable narration, also punishing and arguably self-defeating in its excess. Important…
1990sThe Silence of the Lambs (1991)
An FBI trainee consults imprisoned cannibal Hannibal Lecter to catch a serial killer skinning his victims. The Silence of the Lambs is Jonathan Demme's 1991 American psychological-thriller film adapted from Thomas Harris's 1988 novel, depicting an FBI trainee who consults…
1930sM (1931)
Fritz Lang's 1931 German film. Peter Lorre as a child murderer hunted by both police and the criminal underworld.
2000sZodiac (2007)
David Fincher's 2007 procedural on the SF Zodiac killer investigation. Three protagonists, no killer caught.
CrimeGreatest Serial Killer Films and TV Episodes
Twenty films and TV episodes that use the serial killer as a lens for examining the world rather than as spectacle — from Silence of the Lambs to Mindhunter. What separates the serious from the exploitative, and what fiction writers…