Five-Legged Iguana

A Rundown of the 13 Best Horror Movies I've Seen in the Past Year

[12 of 13]

I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER

(March 2016)

All right. Full disclosure.

As far as I was concerned, there was a lot going for this one, all the reasons why I Am Not a Serial Killer was on my film geek radar in the first place (so I’m so glad it did not disappoint).

Max Records was headlining it.

Records was in Spike Jonze’s astounding adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are. He was also in Ruairi Robinson’s brilliant short film, Blinky. Hell, Records was even in Rian Johnson’s excellent The Brothers Bloom (though in nowhere near the same headlining capacity of either of the former titles).

Billy O’Brien was directing it.

I may not have been too thrilled with O’Brien’s second feature, The Hybrid (originally titled Scintilla), but his debut, Isolation, was a right doozy!

Which brings us rather neatly back to I Am Not a Serial Killer, because this plus Isolation is more than enough for me to politely overlook The Hybrid.

Based on Dan Wells’ novel--the screenplay is written by O’Brien and Christopher Hyde--Serial Killer follows John Wayne Cleaver (Records), a small town teen whose home life (Cleaver Family Funeral Home!) may have just helped contribute to some troubling sociopathic tendencies.

Thankfully, he’s trying to avoid the messy consequences of succumbing to his darker urges (and possibly even using funeral home chores as a coping mechanism), but some brutal killings soon draw his morbid attention, and things soon get very interesting.

With a curious, wry streak of humor running through it, Serial Killer takes some unexpected twists and turns, on its way to that WTF climax, and a commendably appropriate use of Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky.”

With Ruairi Robinson as one of its Executive Producers, and with Doc Brown himself, Christopher Lloyd, in its cast, I Am Not a Serial Killer is a title that you really need to check out, if unconventional and surprising horror is your thing…

(I Am Not a Serial Killer OS’ courtesy of impawards.com & screenanarchy.com.)