Thanks to A Killing Spring, I now know that three of the most awful words in the English language are "Canadian TV movie". This is a whodunit so obvious a family of ocelots could figure it out, with a lead character possessing all the personality of a piece of chalk. Other than seeing a grown up Zachery Ty Bryan who's so grown out it looks like he's eaten Patricia Richardson, there is absolutely nothing here deserving of anyone's attention. And what's worse, this is one of a series of TV movies, which means Canadians actually liked this gruel.
Joanne Kilbourn (Wendy Crewson) is professor of journalism who used to be a cop and there are allusions through the film to a more complicated back story which are never fully explained. Apparently Kilbourn is a famous enough fictional person in Canada that the three writers of this thing just assumed that everyone who watched it would be familiar with everything about her. And by the way three people to write a TV movie based on a book? Could there BE a bigger red flag warning that it's going to suck?
Like practically every episode of Murder, She Wrote, someone close to Kilbourn gets killed. In this case, it's the dean of her college. Kilbourn considers him a friend, even though he notoriously bangs female students and is even shagging the wife of another of Kilbourn's friends. I knew Canadians could be non-judgmental, but that's going a bit far. Anyway, Not-Angela-Lansbury and a police detective try to figure out if the dean was murdered by the bitchy girl he's currently bedding, the working class kid who he screwed out of a prestigious internship or the angry husband he's cuckolding. Of course, it's the one person in the story without any apparent motive who turns out to be the killer.
I don't consider it a "spoiler" to tell you that because if you can't guess the identity of the murderer at least an hour before this movie reveals it, you probably can't read. Those old Columbo's where they showed you who the killer was at the start of the show were more mysterious than A Killing Spring. I mean, forget about the fact that the whole shebang would have been resolved in about 20 minutes if one of the characters had simply opened her mouth and said two sentences. There's a scene here where Kilbourn looks at a photo of a suspect and the story requires her to not recognize that it's someone she has supposedly know for years, even though the presence of a beard is the only visual difference. For a second there, I thought the movie was going to reveal that Kilbourn had that disorder where she couldn't tell the difference between one face and another, but it was merely crappy writing.
As for Kilbourn herself, this film shows her as having two kids, no husband and being rather horny. That's it. She doesn't have any unusual quirks or traits. She doesn't have a unique manner or a mind that works in some amazing way. If Joanne Kilbourn ever went missing and the cops needed a description of her, "utterly unremarkable" is the best one they could get.
Watching A Killing Spring is like sitting with your feet in a tub of oatmeal and not remembering why you're doing it. Canadians may like that sort of thing. The rest of us don't have to go along with them.
Joanne Kilbourn (Wendy Crewson) is professor of journalism who used to be a cop and there are allusions through the film to a more complicated back story which are never fully explained. Apparently Kilbourn is a famous enough fictional person in Canada that the three writers of this thing just assumed that everyone who watched it would be familiar with everything about her. And by the way three people to write a TV movie based on a book? Could there BE a bigger red flag warning that it's going to suck?
Like practically every episode of Murder, She Wrote, someone close to Kilbourn gets killed. In this case, it's the dean of her college. Kilbourn considers him a friend, even though he notoriously bangs female students and is even shagging the wife of another of Kilbourn's friends. I knew Canadians could be non-judgmental, but that's going a bit far. Anyway, Not-Angela-Lansbury and a police detective try to figure out if the dean was murdered by the bitchy girl he's currently bedding, the working class kid who he screwed out of a prestigious internship or the angry husband he's cuckolding. Of course, it's the one person in the story without any apparent motive who turns out to be the killer.
I don't consider it a "spoiler" to tell you that because if you can't guess the identity of the murderer at least an hour before this movie reveals it, you probably can't read. Those old Columbo's where they showed you who the killer was at the start of the show were more mysterious than A Killing Spring. I mean, forget about the fact that the whole shebang would have been resolved in about 20 minutes if one of the characters had simply opened her mouth and said two sentences. There's a scene here where Kilbourn looks at a photo of a suspect and the story requires her to not recognize that it's someone she has supposedly know for years, even though the presence of a beard is the only visual difference. For a second there, I thought the movie was going to reveal that Kilbourn had that disorder where she couldn't tell the difference between one face and another, but it was merely crappy writing.
As for Kilbourn herself, this film shows her as having two kids, no husband and being rather horny. That's it. She doesn't have any unusual quirks or traits. She doesn't have a unique manner or a mind that works in some amazing way. If Joanne Kilbourn ever went missing and the cops needed a description of her, "utterly unremarkable" is the best one they could get.
Watching A Killing Spring is like sitting with your feet in a tub of oatmeal and not remembering why you're doing it. Canadians may like that sort of thing. The rest of us don't have to go along with them.