Review #1,219: 'I Am Not a Serial Killer' (2016)

Last year, Netflix unleashed one of its bigger hits to date - the nostalgic, creepy and ridiculously entertaining Stranger Things. Set in the 1980s, the show quickly garnered a legion of fans old enough to have grown up on the blockbuster classics of Steven Spielberg, as well as attracting younger viewers drawn to its mystery and lovable characters. While Stranger Things itself may have been influenced by J.J. Abrams' throwback Super 8, the show's success can certainly be felt throughout cinema. One such film is Billy O'Brien's I Am Not a Serial Killer, adapted from Dan Wells' young adult novel of the same name, which manages to hide its low budget roots incredibly well and deliver an interesting character study with a supernatural edge.

Teenager John Wayne Cleaver (Max Records) shows all the signs of being a future serial killer. He is well aware that his sinister thoughts and general disdain for humanity do not bode well, and openly tells his therapist so. In order to ensure that he doesn't commit a terrible act he cannot take back, John follows a strict set of rules, including responding to abuse by paying a compliment. It hasn't prevented him from developing a reputation as a freak among his fellow students in high school, but he does enjoy an easy-going friendship with his elderly neighbour, Mr. Crowley (Christopher Lloyd). In his spare time, John helps out his mother (Laura Fraser) with the family funeral home business, where he gets to stare with intense curiosity at the cadavers being readied for embalming. When the town is hit by an organ-stealing murderer, John uses his encyclopaedic knowledge of serial killers to carry out his own investigation.

It's to O'Brien's credit that he has managed to sculpt such an impressive-looking piece out of such a modest budget. It has a grungy, 90s aesthetic with a soundtrack including the likes of Donovan and Norman Greenbaum, but with the way it explores its dark subject matter and troubled protagonist, also feels contemporary. The less known about the film the better, as what little I had heard about it before going in led me to believe that I would be getting a serious study of a young sociopath, but this is only half of the story. The young Records, last seen in 2009's Where the Wild Things Are as an eleven year-old, plays the psycho with a heart of gold with a weirdly endearing blend of creepiness and fragility, and Lloyd gives one of his career-best as one of John's prime suspects. It has its flaws, and your enjoyment of the film may depend on how much genre-mixing you can stomach, but this is an odd yet compelling little indie.


Directed by: Billy O'Brien
Starring: Max Records, Christopher Lloyd, Laura Fraser, Karl Geary
Country: Ireland/UK/USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie