Even if he had never accomplished anything else (and he has!), Andrew Kevin Walker will always be remembered as the screenwriter behind David Fincher’s “Se7en,” the most iconic serial killer procedural of the ’90s that isn’t “The Silence of the Lambs.” Walker’s output since has varied in terms of quality and scope: his script for Tim Burton’s Gothic masterpiece “Sleepy Hollow” felt like a conscious embrace of more elegant, less inherently scuzzy material, more Hammer Horror than Grand Guignol, even as his Joel Schumacher-directed snuff thriller “8mm” retreated into old, nasty habits.
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Walker’s artistic fixations are unmistakable. The idea that he would actually write a movie called “Psycho Killer” is, in a word, ridiculous. It sounds like a joke, like David Cronenberg attaching himself to a project titled “Body Horror.” Yet, here we are, in the tragically ridiculous and violently unpredictable year of 2026, with “Psycho Killer” opening in theaters against Emily Brontë, Glen Powell, and the righteous combination of Rachel McAdams and Sam Raimi, all duking it out for box office dominance. What we have here is a project that languished in development for years, long enough to have had names like Eli Roth and even Fred Durst attached in various capacities. You would think that this lengthy gestation period would have allowed enough time for the filmmakers to come up with a juicy serial killer moniker more inspired than simply ‘the Satanic Slasher.’ Alas, here we are.
True to its generic title and bad guy—whose character design feels unfortunately adjacent to several other recent movie slashers, namely the hulking brute from “In A Violent Nature” and the namesake executioner from last year’s smirky rom-com/horror hybrid “Heart Eyes”—there’s very little in “Psycho Killer” that hasn’t been done with more conviction in a dozen other similarly grim murder-by-numbers thrillers. The film isn’t so much egregious as disengaged; the kind of obligatory-feeling ordeal that all parties involved would just as soon forget.
Directed by veteran producer Gavin Polone (who helped get both “Panic Room” and “Zombieland” off the ground), “Psycho Killer” opens with its only good scene. A greasy-haired psychopath sits behind the wheel of a car cruising down the highway. Almost immediately, he is pulled over by a highway patrol officer. The wife of the officer in question, a cop named Jane Archer (“Barbarian” star Georgina Campbell, doing the best with what she’s given), happens to be on the scene and is there to witness the moment where the creep behind the wheel fatally blows her husband’s brains out with a pistol. Rattled by the trauma of witnessing her romantic and professional partner slain in cold blood, Jane becomes obsessed with tracking down the monster responsible, which leads to a lot of tedious cutting back and forth between our hero’s relentlessly single-minded pursuit and the exploits of the killer himself, which are rife with a lot of shoddy editing and CGI blood.
The incongruities only keep piling on from here. Polone’s film is steeped in the Satanic Panic signifiers of the 1980s (pentagrams, goat’s heads, black mass rituals), yet the music we hear on the radio and the offhanded mention of a 4chan-like forum position this as a story very much unfolding in our contemporary present. Our killer is at least six feet tall and wears a sinister-looking gas mask for most of his screentime. You’re telling me no one’s calling the cops on this guy? As a matter of fact, why is our Psycho Killer checking in at motels under his birth name and not an alias? What of the devil-worshipping metal band whose lyrics and song titles may offer a connection to the crimes? Why, oh why, does the climax unfold at a nuclear power plant?
Look, logic clearly isn’t a priority for either Polone or Walker. Lord knows that hasn’t been a problem in either of their earlier movies. In fact, in the case of something like “Panic Room,” one could say their very flaunting of traditional logic is what makes them enjoyable. This detachment from coherence could be easily forgiven if “Psycho Killer” itself had any interest in exploring deeper reservoirs of dream logic (it doesn’t), or if it simply opted to lean into its own sleaze and cruddiness. Polone and Walker’s long-delayed collaboration is too dour even to depict a close-quarters brawl between its central characters with anything resembling a shred of fun.
Based on its title, logline, and pedigree, “Psycho Killer” promises nothing more and nothing less than salacious early-in-the-year junk-movie thrills. Unfortunately, the film fails to deliver even on that modest promise. A movie like this should let loose and give itself license to go truly crazy. So why does the resulting experience feel so dull, so curiously muted? It is tempting to imagine a decent, unfinished version of “Psycho Killer,” perhaps one that has the courage of its twisted convictions. As of this “Psycho Killer” release, that version remains unmade. [D]
