'Psycho Killer' review: Derivative slasher can’t slice through absurdity

Courtesy of 20th Century Studios

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Languishing in development hell for nearly twenty years, Gavin Polone’s “Psycho Killer” has quietly arrived on over 1,000 screens and I’d wager most probably didn’t even know that. It’s painfully obvious that 20th Century Studios, via Disney, saw the finished product and had no idea how to position it, or whether it was worth positioning at all. Remember how dirty they did “The Empty Man?” 

A diluted imitation of a David Fincher crime saga, (ironically the film was written by “Seven” scribe Andrew Kevin Walker), “Psycho Killer” is, bluntly, really dumb, and it stacks twist upon twist in hopes that confusion passes for depth. There is absolutely no way anyone could ever, ever, in a million years predict where the climax unfolds, and even when you finally get there, the absurdity overwhelms any intended sense of escalation.

“Psycho Killer” is clearly assembled from spare parts of every serial killer thriller of the past three decades. In an era where most anonymous genre exercises are quietly shuffled onto streaming, it’s baffling that this one received a full theatrical rollout. Even when the script originated around 2007, it would have felt dated. Today, it plays like a relic. Beyond the marketing hook that it comes from the producers of “Barbarian,” there’s nothing distinctive here. The screenplay feels endlessly reworked, patched together, and reshaped in post-production.

The setup is boilerplate. A satanic slasher is murdering motorists along interstate highways from California to the Midwest. His motive is essentially “the devil made me do it.” Played by wrestler-turned-actor James Preston Rogers, the killer is tall and imposing, which at least makes him visually credible. His victims are left with satanic symbols scrawled in blood. He listens to a cult podcast hosted by Malcolm McDowell, who appears to be performing in an entirely different, more entertaining movie.

Meanwhile, the FBI is depicted as aggressively incompetent. So incompetent, in fact, that the case falls to highway patrol officer Jane, played by Georgina Campbell. Never mind that she witnessed her husband, also a cop, get murdered by this killer in broad daylight less than three days earlier. Never mind that her father cautions her that revenge will not bring him back. She’s not propelled  by grief, so much as by plot necessity.

The narrative constantly shifts perspectives. One moment Jane is in a diner Googling leads. The next she’s storming into FBI headquarters demanding access to the case, only to be shown the door before a conveniently rebellious agent decides to help her anyway. Her investigative instincts verge on clairvoyant. As the killer crisscrosses the country, she just happens to land at the precise hotel out of thousands where he’s hiding. This culminates in a painfully staged confrontation, complete with slow motion, that sees her being thrown through a window, and then an abrupt cut to a later scene where she appears perfectly fine, as though the previous sequence never occurred.

We also learn she’s pregnant. While reading a baby book in a diner, she experiences a sudden revelation and asks for a glass of milk, as if maternal symbolism alone can substitute for character development. These moments are not isolated. They are the movie.

On the killer’s side, we’re teased with the promise of some grand, operatic mission that only crystallizes in the final twenty minutes. The reveal is framed as clever and subversive, but it lands as undercooked and incoherent. The finale feels rushed, as though the filmmakers believed they were delivering a bold narrative pivot when in reality they were yanking the wheel on a story that never had firm control of the road. You can understand why filmmakers like Eli Roth once circled the script in the early 2000s. There is a pulpy, provocative idea buried somewhere in here. But what survives on screen ends not with catharsis, but with confusion. Miss a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it detail earlier in the film and the final shot collapses entirely.

And that’s ultimately the problem. Nothing in “Psycho Killer” feels earned. Jane is not written as a fully realized person so much as a vehicle for momentum. Campbell, so effective in “Barbarian,” is stranded without the structural support or emotional architecture necessary to ground the story. She’s given urgency but no interiority.

In the end, “Psycho Killer” is a derivative, identity-less thriller that wants to stand alongside “Zodiac,” but plays like a discount knockoff. After nearly two decades in development, this is what emerged: a movie that feels as unfinished as its journey to the screen. It should have stayed on the shelf. 

Grade: D- 

PYSCHO KILLER is now playing in theaters.