Michael Winterbottom churns out films at such a rate it’s hardly surprising that the quality control can take a battering at times. However, for his adaptation of Jim Thompsons’s novel, The Killer Inside Me, things go totally off the scale as Winterbottom gives us his poorest film for some time, and possibly ever. The gist of the story is that Lou Ford (Casey Affleck) is a Deputy Sheriff of a small Texan town who starts to have recurrences of his old “sickness”; that of being a serial killer. This is a slow moving film however, which just doesn’t grip and has lost the plot long before it's implausible ending. Whilst most of the violence is off screen or just spoken of, there’s two scenes that have caused uproar. Both of them concern vicious and prolonged attacks on women, with the first being particularly unpleasant to watch. You may argue that these scenes are necessary to show just how disturbed Affleck’s character is, but this goes way over the top and feels exploitive. It’s a shame really as Winterbottom’s film does capture a nice noir mood, but that won’t be the talking point as you leave the cinema. A brutal mistake by Winterbottom, you could say.
The OC Film Sting Final Verdict
This would have a low rating anyway, but the aforementioned stomach churning violence shown against women pushes this much lower. Rating: 2/10.
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