The Killer Inside Me | DVD Review

Director Michael Winterbottom (A Mighty Heart, The Road To Guantanamo) is not one to shy away from controversial subject matter, and with The Killer Inside Me, he does not disappoint. What is disappointing, however, is that the controversy surrounding the brutality inflicted on women in the film threatens to take away from this excellent little crime thriller with a touch of film noir atmosphere.

Based on the acclaimed 1952 pulp novel by Jim Thompson, The Killer Inside Me is the story of Lou Ford, a small-town deputy sherriff (Casey Affleck, Gone Baby Gone) who, when assigned by his boss (veteran character actor Tom Bower, Crazy Heart) to run a prostitute named Joyce (Jessica Alba, Sin City) out of town, falls for her instead and the two plot against local developer Chester Conway (Ned Beatty, Deliverance), whose son is engaged to marry Joyce. Unfortunately for Joyce, even though Lou is madly in love with her he’ll stop at nothing to get revenge on Conway, against whom he holds an old grudge. After brutally beating Joyce and shooting her fiance, and with just about everyone, including his own fiancee (Kate Hudson, Almost Famous), suspecting him of some sort of wrong-doing, Lou realizes he’s in over his head and will stop at nothing to devise a plan to get himself out of it.

It’s been argued that the violence against women in the film is over the top and unnecessary to the development of the story, but in fact it’s the sheer brutality of the beating inflicted by Lou on Joyce – all while proclaiming his love for her and softly telling her it’s almost over – that helps propel the plot along. The fact that the story is also told in a first person narrative, with Lou providing voiceover narration, further sucks the audience in whether we like it or not. Not only are we witnesses to his crimes, but we’re actually accomplices. With the help of an excellent cast that also includes Elias Koteas (Let Me In) as a nosy union head and Simon Baker (TV’s The Mentalist) as a detective who zeroes in on Ford from the start, Winterbottom easily conveys the feel and tone of the novel, using a dark and dusty color palette that infuses every scene with the grittiness that this type of film uses almost as another character.

The film looks great in the 2.35:1 widescreen transfer, but whether it’s a case of poor sound engineering or simply an effect of Affleck’s marble-mouth delivery, the sound could have been a lot more clear. You can make out everything that’s going on, but sometimes it would be nice to hear every word of dialogue being delivered.

As far as special features go, all that viewers are treatred to are three “making of” featurettes, each involving one of the lead actors, and each running less than three minutes. It’s a stretch to call these short interviews “making of” featurettes, as Casey Affleck, Kate Hudson, and Jessica Alba simply describe their characters and why they chose to sign on to the film. There’s not one bit of behind the scenes footage in any of the three segments, and much of the film footage and voice-over are repeated in each of them. Most likely created as promotional material for one of those independent film channels on cable, they may be worth watching, but once is enough.

Because the story is told from a cold-hearted murderer’s point of view, It’s hard to really like any of the characters in The Killer Inside Me, simply because they are all out to get him and so he can’t see them in any completely positive light (see, there’s that ‘witness/accomplice’ thing again). But to not like any of the characters is no excuse to not like the film itself. The Killer Inside Me is an excellent example of a modern day film noir: gritty, sexy, and unsettling in equal measures.

Movie rating – 4

Disc Rating – 2