Psycho Killer, a taut but flawed thriller that swaps the sophistication of Seven for a Satanic cliché, driven by a strong lead in Georgina Campbell
From the writer who defined 90s cinematic darkness comes a new slasher that attempts to revisit the gritty serial killer thriller. Andrew Kevin Walker, the mind behind David Fincher’s seminal Seven and the recent The Killer, teams with first-time director Gavin Polone for Psycho Killer, a cross-country cat-and-mouse chase featuring a Satanic Slasher. While the pedigree suggests a return to form, a journey back to the rain-soaked, nihilistic corridors of Walker’s imagination.
Walker’s script, originally a spec piece that has lingered in development hell for years, carries the DNA of his earlier work: a fascination with the procedural grind of law enforcement, the grotesque theatre of murder, and the psychological toll on those who hunt monsters. The killer at the centre, played by James Preston Rogers, cuts an impressive and creepy figure. With his deliberate, unhurried gait, unsettling mask, and the almost liturgical cadence of his voice, he evokes the mute, relentless terror of Michael Myers.
However, where Myers is a blank-faced force of nature—an absent stare into which audiences project their own fears—this villain is burdened with a mythology. The film leans into a “Satanic” backstory that feels as clunky and outdated as the “Satanic panic” tropes that plagued the 1980s, a narrative crutch that horror has largely moved beyond.
He shares less of the sophisticated, world-weary malevolence of John Doe (Kevin Spacey’s iconic turn in Seven) and more of the hollow, theatrical menace of a slasher trying too hard to be iconic. John Doe was terrifying because his philosophy, however twisted, felt like a dark mirror to the real world; his murders were sermons on the sins of humanity.
In contrast, the Satanic Slasher here often feels like a straw man, a boogeyman from a bygone era of moral panic. The character lands somewhere between the two extremes of horror’s most notorious psychos: he has the visual presence of Myers but lacks the primal simplicity, and he attempts the philosophical gravitas of Doe but lacks the chillingly articulate script to back it up. It is a performance and a character caught in a no-man ‘s-land, leaving the film’s thematic weight to be carried elsewhere.
That weight falls largely on Georgina Campbell (Barbarian), whose performance as Trooper Jane Archer provides the film’s emotional core and moral compass. Where the killer is shrouded in cliché, Archer is refreshingly grounded. Campbell delivers a properly heroic performance, one defined by an “aggressive lack of cooperation” from the FBI and a singular, burning focus.
The film smartly subverts a tired action trope by casting a woman as the vengeance-driven cop who missed the shot that could have saved her spouse. This gender role reversal breathes life into a familiar revenge narrative, allowing Campbell to portray a grief that is stoic rather than hysterical, and a determination that is intellectual rather than purely physical. She is the audience’s anchor in a film that otherwise struggles to balance its gritty police procedural roots with its more outlandish slasher elements, proving that even when the mythology falters, a strong lead can keep the tension taut.
Psycho Killer Review: A Satanic Slasher Caught Between Seven and Stereotype
A Horror Movie Review by Hope Madden
Gavin Polone’s Psycho Killer had one strike against it going in, for me. The film takes us along for the ride on the Satanic Slasher’s cross-country killing spree.
And while James Preston Rogers cuts an impressive figure as the serial killer at the center of this cat and mouse chase, a Satanic murderer is a conservative straw dog cliché as tired and damaging as witches, maybe worse.
That aside, Polone, working from a script by Andrew Kevin Walker (Se7en, The Killer, Metalocaplyse: Army of the Doomstar), crafts a taut thriller.
Georgina Campbell (Barbarian) is Trooper Jane Archer. After witnessing her husband’s murder, Archer determines to take the shot she missed and put an end to the Satanic Slasher.
Campbell delivers a properly heroic performance. Smart, driven, and with an aggressive lack of cooperation from the FBI and other law enforcement agencies but nothing to divide her attention, Archer figures out the psycho’s trajectory.
And though her story involves one almost inescapable cliché, having a woman play the cop who misses the shot that could save their spouse and then, job be damned, scours the country to kill the bastard—it’s a nice gender role reversal.
The villain’s concept impresses: the hair, the mask, the coats, the voice. His mythology is sometimes clunky, other times lazy, but it’s rarely the backstory that makes a villain memorable. This guy’s creepy.
Logan Miller offers solid support with limited screentime. Likewise, Malcolm McDowell lends his unmistakably infernal voice to great effect, providing the film with a bit of dramatic flourish. But otherwise, Psycho Killer blends police procedural and revenge flick with plenty of tension and not a lot of fanfare.
There’s fairly little onscreen violence. Though an awful lot of grisly carnage is mentioned, there are only a few scenes in the film depicting it. Two of them are grimly subversive and worth the ticket price.
The third act comes seems to come from nowhere, but it’s a big capper to the slow building momentum of the Slasher’s bloody journey. Psycho Killer isn’t perfect, but it’s a tight, entertaining bit of a thrill.
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