“I’m tense and nervous, and I can’t relax,” scowled David Byrne, the lead singer of Talking Heads, on the song “Psycho Killer,” the band’s bouncy 1977 character study of a nut case.
But it’s the lyrics from the chorus — “Psycho killer, qu’est-ce que c’est?” — that best expresses the takeaway from this brain-melting new slasher film, the feature debut from the TV and movie producer Gavin Polone. Because when it comes to this Dumpster’s worth of horror nothingness, that’s the inescapable question, translated into English: What is it?
Georgina Campbell plays Jane, a Kansas highway patrol officer who travels the country to track down the hulking killing machine (James Preston Rogers) who shot her husband, a fellow patrolman, in front of her during a traffic stop. Authorities call this sadistic, superhuman monster the Satanic Slasher for the cryptic messages he finger paints in blood at murder scenes and motel rooms.
The guy’s on a one-way mission too, and it’s right around this revelation that the film introduces a metal band named Demon Fist and Malcolm McDowell as the cokehead leader of a gang of poser Satanists who live at a mansion that a “Scooby Doo” Realtor would be proud to show. From there, one could be forgiven for thinking that Polone and the screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker — who wrote “Seven,” one of horror’s enduring serial killer films — wanted to prank audiences, not actually terrify them. It didn’t work.
For a smarter “Psycho Killer,” watch the music video that Talking Heads released just last year starring Saoirse Ronan.
Psycho Killer Rated R for cutting violence and crushing stupidity. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. In theaters.
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