When the stars threw down their spears,
and water’d heaven with their tears,
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?
— William Blake, The Tiger
1. Introduction
I Am Not a Serial Killer is a new release from director Billy O’Brien. Adapted from a novel of the same name by Dan Wells, Wikipedia classifies the film as a ‘supernatural thriller.’ This is reductive. I Am Not a Serial Killer is rather many things: an indie drama, a character study, a horror film, a thriller, a dialectical on humanness, a subversive take on old tropes, and a small town crime narrative with a demonological twist.
It’s the story of sociopath, and high-school Beta-Male, John Wayne Cleaver — played by Max Records of Where the Wild Things Are — who is obsessed with serial killers. He writes all his school reports on them, studies them obsessively, and talks about them at lunch to his only friend. But his fascination becomes reality when brutalized corpses appear in his small town, sending John into a tarpit of investigative query. And it’s not long before John’s snooping takes a much darker turn.
Before I pontificate any further, let me round back to Beta-Males (and Beta-Male movies).
2. The Beta-Male in Film & Reality
There is a plethora of Hollywood movies that focus on the so-called ‘Beta-Male.’ The stock character of the outcast male-identified white person brooding over the cruelties of his upper-middle class existence: Bullying jocks and uninterested women. (Let’s turn to the national treasure that is TV Tropes for some examples). The bullies in these films are, of course, still bullies. Pummeling an ‘inferior’ because of perceived differences. But, when the Beta-Male is confronted with women in these narratives two mindsets come into play:
- This woman doesn’t like me because I’m different, therefore I am angry at her.
- I deserve this woman.
Look at a film like Revenge of the Nerds — a hit 80’s comedy loved by many despite being exceedingly creepy. One of the ‘nerds’ goes so far as to impersonate a woman’s boyfriend to have sex with her. This ill-conceived plan works and is also, fundamentally, rape. We see here the Beta-Male mentality at play. ‘Pretty woman doesn’t pine over me as I do them. Yet, I deserve them and will take drastic measures to secure what I feel is mine.’
(Pictured: A Creepy Movie)
In our modern connected era we see these ideologies played out in a much more real way — between the Alt-Right, the GamerGaters, and 4channers, this I Deserve mentality is more dominant than ever. And judging by the actions of these men, their real-life narratives are much less fun and quirky. They are toxic and dangerous. Turn to Elliot Rodger — the 22 year old shooter in the 2014 Isla Vista Shootings and the son of a Hollywood director — who turned his misogynistic vitriol into violence with the pull of a trigger. “You denied me a happy life,” he chillingly said in his final YouTube video, “and in turn I will deny all of you life.”
People will argue that not every person of this mindset is a killer. Well. Yes. Obviously in this tangible reality of ours — with all its multitudinous complexities — there are outsider Beta-Males who happen to be white who aren’t murderers. But being socialized a male in a male dominated society causes a strain of entitlement to run through these outcasts — no matter the other social factors at play. It’s hardwired. And hardwired in part due to the media we as a culture consume — a listable enterprise of high grossing movies that tells men they deserve the women they objectify and lust over.
2.1. Is This Asshole Going to Talk About the Goddamn Movie?
Yes, I am going to talk about the damn movie —
— because what’s great about I Am Not a Serial Killer is how it takes many of the tropes of the Beta-Male character but plays them against a much more frightening individual: A teenage sociopath. There is little scarier than a white male teenager with violent tendencies. Yet I Am Not a Serial Killer, much like real life, does not take the easy way out. John Wayne Cleaver — that name being one of the low-points of the movie — is still a sympathetic character.
Or at the very least he garners some empathy — or deeper consideration to take place — due to how he both embodies and defies our expectations of both the Beta-Male and the Sociopath.
3. The Beta-Male and the Sociopath
John Wayne Cleaver is human.
He is no Patrick Bateman. Instead he is an ‘average’ teenager working through problems of his personality. This is strangely relatable. If I were to point to a pop-culture comparison, I would say John is more like Dexter Morgan. But clad in flannel and sporting long hair, it’s hard to see John in a way that doesn’t immediately paint him as a school shooter. Or, yes, a serial killer. John is scary — a ticking-time bomb of sociopathic urges. However, the film cleverly uses old tropes to help the audience empathize with his plight.
John is bullied by an Alpha-Male coded peer. This character is given no shades of complexity. He is a brute looking for ‘freaks’ to smash. When contrasted with the complexities of the main characters at play this bully becomes too thinly sketched. Still, it works because in those aforementioned ‘Beta-Male’ movies, the bullies were always one dimensional. Seeing a loner get bullied is an easy bridge to create audience sympathy. This helps us feel for John, because we know John wants to be normal — but even the school bullies can see through this facade.
Perhaps this is because he expresses his want for normalcy in a way completely foreign to most of us non-sociopaths. For example, John lives by a system of checks and balances to make sure he is remaining ‘normal.’ These involve hanging out with the other school ‘weird-o’ and complimenting people when he feels like hurting them. But, despite this, John’s violent urges remain. Being fascinated with the human body — more specifically, what lays beneath — seems to be an innate part of him. He has a draw to innards. In addition, his family owns a funeral home (bringing shades of Six Feet Under to the proceedings) which only worsens the situation.
To quote John speaking to his Alpha-Male bully during a moment when he loses sense of his checks and balances:
“I’ve been clinically diagnosed with sociopathy. Do you know what that means? … It means that you’re about as important to me as a cardboard box… The thing about boxes is that you can open them up. Even though they’re completely boring on the outside, there might be something interesting inside. So while you’re saying all of these stupid, boring things I’m imagining what it would be like to cut you open and see what you’ve got in there.”
But still, and I stress this, John legitimately doesn’t want to kill anyone. And his struggle to coalesce these two disparate parts of his identity stands as the most fascinating dramatic threads of the tale.
Perhaps more humorously is how this film plays with the high-school crush trope. If you looked through the previously linked TV Tropes page you’d see how common ‘Geek-Gets-the-Girl’ is. I Am Not a Serial Killer twists this idea on its head. A fellow classmate has a clear crush on John. She talks to John at the school dance. At the library. Gives him flirt-ish glances. And tries to comfort him in trying times. But John just does not get it. All these, obvious to us, signs are so far out of the reach of his understanding that, to John, she is just another person on the slow train toward death. This is darkly humorous, and oddly endearing.
All of this is to say, that by using the tropes of poorer movies before it, I Am Not a Serial Killer manages to make a sociopath with almost no empathy sort-of likeable, or at the very least understandable. This in combination with Max Records’ grounded performance and the film’s character-study pace make the film an interesting look at the demons which lurk underneath human flesh.
Which brings me to my next point —
5. Demons that Lurk Beneath Human Skin
This section will involve crucial spoilers. So if you are reading this before seeing the flick, I recommend you stop here. I say this, because this part of the movie (the plot-stuff, so it were) is a lot of fun!
Spoilers starting now…
There’s a demon in this movie. There’s also the great Christopher Lloyd. The two are intricately connected. Yes. The 77 year old actor from your childhood is now a terrorizing demon.
As mentioned earlier, a series of bodies show up in John’s town. John investigates, which leads him to see his gentle old neighbor, Mr. Crowley, extend a demonic hand through the chest of a local bum and tear out his lungs.
John spies further and further on Mr. Crowley, watching as the old man kills more and more locals, seemingly, in an attempt to extend his existence to stay together with his wife for as long as she lives. But John — did I mention he doesn’t actually want anyone to die? — is determined to stop these murders.
I won’t tell you the rest of the details except for one: John lures Crowley into a trap by harming his wife — the one thing he loves. From here the movie takes the leap that True Detective didn’t have the guts to make in Season 1. It goes fully demonic.
The CG of the demon is little lacking, but Christopher Lloyd’s throaty growl is truly terrifying. Some critics have not appreciated the film’s turn here into the supernatural, but thematically it’s amazing. Opposing our sociopathic Beta-Male — a reflection of our reality — with a literal demon — a manifestation of mankind’s most theological concerns — is thought provoking.
It causes us to question what we know about basic humanness. Because what’s scarier? A demonic presence that begrudgingly kills for love, or a human who could erupt at any moment and kill countless people without care?
Even though John was doing the right thing by trying to stop the demon, seeing the two interact with one another makes us consider who is more human. If a Terror from the Unknown can love as the rest of us do, but a Beta-Male high-schooler cannot, what does that say about us? As a society? As a species?
What does it say about the movies we consume? These tales of gentle Betas and inhuman demons. If demons are real they must question, as does Crowley, “Did He who made the lamb make [me]?”
But, more importantly, so must the entitled Beta-Males of our reality. The shooters, the mental abusers, the twitter harassers (‘Ghostbros’ anyone?), and everyone mentioned before. Did He who make the lamb make them?
The movie gives no concrete answer. Because there isn’t one.
6. To Wrap It Up.
This is a movie worth seeing, because it’s important to support indie films, but also because beneath it’s surface (like a cardboard box) are concerns far more fascinating than the B-Movie pull of Demon v. Sociopath! That being said, it’s really cool there’s a demon in this movie and if that’s your thing, it’s also worth checking out.
It should also be highlighted that movie is shot on 16mm, and the grainy aesthetic is gorgeous, perfectly complementing the movie’s story and themes.
A special sidebar is deserved for Christopher Lloyd. Sweet and frightening. Decrepit but strong. Alternating between old man stuttering and chillingly evil poem-readings (Blake’s The Tiger). It’s a role he deserves — combining the likability of Doc Brown with unknowable terror of Judge Doom.
The other performances are great as well (except for a dud turn from whoever played John’s one friend), but this is a late career performance Christopher Lloyd really deserves. Between this and his role as the Woodsman from Over the Garden Wall, Lloyd is really taking advantage of his nearly-destroyed voice.
(Pictured: Christopher Lloyd in Over the Garden Wall).
Well that’s all folks! This movie seems to mostly have a VOD release, so rent it and check it out!
I Am Not a Serial Killer
2016
dir. Billy O’Brien
104 mins.
