Evoking the ghost of Donnie Darko, this weird horror hybrid is a darkly funny trip through the mind of a would-be killer
“Fear is a really weird thing,” says the antihero of this scalpel-sharp, blackly comic adaptation of Dan Wells’s 2009 Ya bestseller. “People are afraid of things, but they’re never afraid of their own actions.” Not so John Wayne Cleaver, the serial killer-obsessed teenager whose therapist agrees that he exhibits all three of the “Macdonald triad” predictors of violent sociopathy. “But you’re in control of your own destiny,” Karl Geary’s Dr Neblin assures John hollowly. “You’re a good person.”
Yet death is close at hand, stalking the streets of the miserable midwest town of Clayton, where an animalistic killer is stealing people’s organs and leaving a trail of sticky black goo. John, whose name evokes the real-life Illinois “Killer Clown” John Wayne Gacy, is fascinated by the murders,...
“Fear is a really weird thing,” says the antihero of this scalpel-sharp, blackly comic adaptation of Dan Wells’s 2009 Ya bestseller. “People are afraid of things, but they’re never afraid of their own actions.” Not so John Wayne Cleaver, the serial killer-obsessed teenager whose therapist agrees that he exhibits all three of the “Macdonald triad” predictors of violent sociopathy. “But you’re in control of your own destiny,” Karl Geary’s Dr Neblin assures John hollowly. “You’re a good person.”
Yet death is close at hand, stalking the streets of the miserable midwest town of Clayton, where an animalistic killer is stealing people’s organs and leaving a trail of sticky black goo. John, whose name evokes the real-life Illinois “Killer Clown” John Wayne Gacy, is fascinated by the murders,...
- 12/11/2016
- by Mark Kermode, Observer film critic
- The Guardian - Film News
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