Better than any low budget slasher deserves to be, Killer Me (2001) is a wonderfully pokerfaced, edgy, & atmospheric exploitation film, verging toward indie arthouse fare. The obvious comparison is Henry: A Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986), but Killer Me has a streak of decency & sentiment that makes it strictly its own film.

A college professor (Garth Wilton) speaks of the rare chromosone "triple X" which in theory should be an individual biologically disposed to criminal violence. He then reveals that someone in the class is triple-X, but does not reveal who.

Eating microwave macaroni in the company of his only friend, a goldfish in a jar, student Joe (George Foster looking amazingly like a young Harvey Keitel) has cut himself off from any social life. Anna (Christina Kew), a fellow student in the criminology classes, takes an interest in Joe, wanting to date him.

She just about forces herself into his life. Her childlike innocence is kind of weird. Loner though he is, he's not so far gone that her presence bothers him; a girlfriend would be nice.

He uses her visits as an excuse to clean the house. She's socially inept but very, very cute & they seem really to be getting along.

Killer Me turns into a romance of two naive people, one of whom happens to be a killer.

Slasher fans may be annoyed by the satiric chick-flick content, but the capacity for these two oddballs to bond is honestly very touching, with suspense inherent to just knowing what Joe is capable of.


His weapon of choice is an old-fashioned straight-razor. It appears as though he favors men as victims, especially ones he perceives as having been abusive to women & children.

When his goldfish dies, he's driven first to cut himself, then to go on a "hunt" as voices murmur in his head.

After sunset, he becomes witness to a gang of rapists, which cause flashbacks to when he was a little boy who could not help his own mother.

When repressed memories of childhood flood in on him, it's grotesquely comprehensible that he'd've grown up weird.

As the product of environment, not genetics, it seems less & less likely he's the triple-X candidate. Indeed, he may not actually be an authentic serial killer, but more of a suicide risk.

The ultimate tension of the piece evolves into our uncertainty as to whether he's a danger to Anna, or only to himself.

copyright © by Paghat the Ratgirl