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KILLER ME
I'm sure there are those who will compare Zachary Hansen's KILLER ME to John McNaughton's masterful HENRY: PROTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER. Both pictures depict men coming to grips with the violence in their day to day existence, and how the struggle overcomes them. At their cores - love stories. There's even a similar visual motif where both characters stand in front of mirrors staring into their reflections of evil.
Produced by Farine Yeganegi and Ferran Viladevall
Directed, Written, and Edited by Zachary Hansen
Director of Photography - Neal FredericksJoseph - George Foster
Anna - Christina Kew
Joseph's Mother - Linda Fontaine
But the similarities end there.
KILLER ME explores a different type of darkness than HENRY. HENRY was about rage and anger. KILLER ME is all pain and sympathy. In HENRY, the title character made peace with the animal inside long ago and allows it to roam freely. In KILLER ME, Joseph, wants to be a better man and is at odds with his carnal side often struggling with the kill.
KILLER ME opens at a point in time that could be right after a kill as Joseph dreams about the events and what led him to that point, and I emphasize the word "could." One of the more interesting aspects of the movie is that time is never a constant, it's an abstract Hansen reinforces through Godardian editing where wasted space and time are lost on the cutting room floor. Most of the events flow in a conventional narrative style, but there are moments so subtle that they could be missed where one wonders what takes place in Joseph's head and what is reality.
Reinforcing Joseph's state of mind is the most inventive soundtrack I've ever heard, all industrial noise and low whispers created on the Fisher Price PXL2000, and moody Euro-styled visuals by Blair Witch Director of Photography Neal Fredericks. There are certain flashback sequences where the two elements are pushed to the max, the sounds are harsher and the camera speed varies, and the results reminded me of the much costlier effects in the recent 13 GHOSTS remake. It goes to show that creativity is both inexpensive and utterly priceless.
Never outshined by Hansen and Fredericks' visual stylings are the lead actors, George Foster as Joseph and Christina Kew as his love interest Anna. Foster seems at home in George's daily torment. The characters life is filled with repetition; he goes to class, works in the school library, and comes home to microwaved pasta dishes. He dreams of his dead mother and waits for the end. Foster paints his character with fine strokes; he's restrained without being wooden. Not even sure if he's even killed anyone, Joseph's life is filled with mundane self-induced pain until the day he meets Anna.
Christina Kew's Anna brings life to both Joseph and the movie as a whole. Christina possesses that wholesome beauty you want to take back home and introduce to mom. She's the kind of gorgeous where her perfect lips make perfect smiles and her wonderfully expressive Carribean blue eyes have you wishing to swim in them forever. Kew uses all her natural attributes to play Anna with that enchanting awkwardness of a timid woman trying her hardest to be forward and put an end to her loneliness.
Foster and Kew work well together, they have a twisted chemistry that's both believable and unnerving. These two need each other more than they could possibly know and it's their romance that we follow, not the usual pattern of 1-2-3 killings found in most horror-themed productions (and I'm hard-pressed to call this horror at all - it's much more a dark drama).
Hansen ends his film on a note of hope, something refreshingly contrary to the current trend of serial killer films. On the disc's commentary, Hansen mentions that the ending is controversial, people don't like its ambiguously positive nature, but I find it rewarding. I'd like to give these tortured souls the benefit of the doubt and wish the best on what life has to offer. That's not something I do very often, but in the end I cared for these flawed characters. Hansen made them human, and that's probably the best compliment I can give a writer-director, and best reason to see the movie.
Also, on the invaluable commentary by Hanson and Fredericks, it's mentioned that the movie was "in the can" for a mere $12k (thanks in large part to a film grant from Kodak which consisted primarily of a newer faster 16mm stock). Listening to how the two spent the money is like taking Cinematography 101. Fredericks discusses set-up and lighting while Hanson will go into the significance of each shot design. For those never having gone to film school, this is the next best thing to being on set.
The rest of the disc contains a trailer, two extended scenes, and one deleted sequence. The disc lists "shorts" by Hansen, if this refers to short film projects, I wasn't able to find them.