A Laughably Bad Attempt At Reinventing the Serial Killer Formula

PLOT: A police officer tracks a killer after her husband, a highway patrolman, becomes one of his victims.

REVIEW: Se7en made Andrew Kevin Walker the premier name in serial killer cinema. His script was smart, cutting-edge, and, combined with David Fincher’s direction, provided one of the greatest films of all time. So there’s been a lot of buzz surrounding Walker’s return to the genre with Psycho Killer. But with those lofty expectations, could it ever possibly live up to that level of hype? Well, it’s probably best that you just check those expectations at the door.

I’m actually kind of gobsmacked with just how bad Psycho Killer ended up being. Nearly every single moment becomes so silly in a film that should have been a disturbing look at the mind of a killer. Instead, we’re given tame violence, a laughable bad guy, and a lead that needs some sense shaken into her. The story follows Georgina Campbell’s Jane Archer, a highway patrolwoman who witnesses the death of her husband by a deranged killer. So she goes after him, setting out on a mission of justice and vengeance. This story splits time with her and the Slasher, as he’s busy killing various people along the interstate.

I always find Campbell to be charming, and she does the best she can here, but Jane is just poorly written all around. She’s really hard to root for, especially after finding out she’s pregnant with her dead husband’s baby, and still opts to sloppily chase down a serial killer. Thankfully, she’s has plot armor like she’s a character from Stranger Things. Every performance around her ranges from okay to bad, with some line readings making me literally laugh out loud. The characters are all such cardboard cutouts. Even Malcolm McDowell is in a completely thankless role that comes and goes from the story with very little consequence.

The design of the killer is interesting enough, with the Gas Mask feeling pretty fun and the man himself having a hulking stature. But that’s about where any of the good ends, as the killer himself is so damn lame. He has this insanely low voice that makes nearly every line of his completely laughable. Almost every other scene is the “Psycho Killer” killing someone, and it was shocking just how often it happened off-screen or in a flash. There’s one particular sequence that features some of the worst CGI blood I’ve seen in quite some time. There’s really no excuse for it, and it comes across as pure laziness from the filmmakers. I mourn what this could have been with practical effects and some actual tension. But there’s only so much that could be done with a script like this.

As much as Andrew Kevin Walker’s name carried this film into the public consciousness, it probably would have just been better if he just went by the ole reliable “Alan Smithee” instead. The characters all suck, the dialogue is cringy and the “twists” are hardly even twists. They’re simply stating things that any savvy viewer will have already figured out. This is the kind of screenplay that a teenager writes and thinks they’ve written something amazing, only for it to be ridiculed by anyone with any sense of plot progression, character development, or just how human beings act. And given how much I love Se7en, this all hurts me to say.

Overall, Psycho Killer is one of the most disappointing times I’ve had in the theater in quite a while. I love a good serial killer thriller, and it feels like this took every possible misstep imaginable. For a movie that features so many kills, I can’t believe how little impact they actually left. The film itself was completely barren of any tension, and that’s probably because there was no one to care about. Victims are simply fodder, and we don’t even get names for most of them. That would have been fine if they went for shock value, but there’s not even any of that present. When it’s all said and done, the story is nonsensical and fails in nearly every regard.

Psycho Killer releases to theaters on February 20th, 2026.

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