The Killer Inside Me, the latest genre excursion from filmmaker Michael Winterbottom, opens with a huge red herring. A jaunty, stylish credits sequence ushers the film in to the tune of Little Willie John’s version of ‘Fever’. ‘Fever”s a bit of an aural signpost.
Putting it over the opening credits of a film is like saying “What follows will be sexy. You will basically be able to smell it”.
The fact that The Killer Inside Me won’t give you a fever that’s hard to bear, however, is the least of its problems.
Casey Affleck stars as Deputy Sheriff Lou Ford, tasked with running prostitute Joyce Lakeland (Jessica Alba) out of town at the behest of a local property tycoon (Ned Beatty in a stetson, always a pleasure), whose son has designs on eloping with her. Deputy Ford and Joyce fall in love, conspire to dupe Beatty out of some money and skip town. Ford decides to take the plan in a wholly different direction and has good old-fashioned moider in mind.
Tonally weird – not in a good way – and largely inconsequential – despite a final act attempt at ladling on profundity – The Killer Inside Me, adapted from Jim Thompson’s darkest noir, just kind of hangs there, as a film, pissing off those, like me, who really wanted it to be great and using a certain kind of shock tactic to bait those who probably wouldn’t have given the film a second look otherwise. This is the film where Jessica Alba gets punched in the face.
Repeatedly.
For a good few minutes.
Yes, it’s difficult to skirt around the violence in The Killer Inside Me. Thompson’s prose goes pretty hard, but translated to pictures… well, it’s hard to lie here, it’s pretty repugnant. And we’re gorehounds.
Part of the reason for this is Winterbottom’s failure to convey the love between Ford and Joyce, which gives the ensuing violence a tasteless nihilistic tinge. It feels low-stakes and exploitative, when it shouldn’t have (yes there’s a place for low-stakes, exploitative, nihilistic violence, but the lack of feeling is a minus here).
It’s a shame as the impressive cast all do good work, most notably Kate Hudson who – as Ford’s put-upon girlfriend, Amy – is as good as she’s ever been. Affleck is dependably excellent and chilling and Elias Koteas and Brent Briscoe do well with small roles.
Winterbottom’s prolific nature is really starting to tell, however, and his films are suffering as a by-product. Yeah, okay we know you like to knock out at least a film a year but maybe taking a little more time on some of them might elevate them from merely ‘good’ to ‘great’ status. There’s yet to be a dislikeable Winterbottom feature (yes, you can even manage to enjoy the reviled ‘NME Goes Grumble’ of 9 Songs for what it is), but it’s hard to love any of them. They all, to a film, stop short of greatness and The Killer Inside Me is no exception.
It does have a lot to recommend – the performances, as mentioned, the arid Texan-noir atmosphere and a barmy epilogue that’s pretty faithful to the book – but the overall impression left by The Killer Inside Me, in spite of the amount of times Alba’s face gets pounded, is that of a trifle when it should have cut deeper.
The Killer Inside Me is released on Blu-Ray & DVD on Monday September 27th.