The Killer Inside Me (2010 film)

The Killer Inside Me is a 2010 American film adaptation of the 1952 novel of the same name by Jim Thompson. The film is directed by Michael Winterbottom and stars Casey Affleck, Jessica Alba, and Kate Hudson. At its release, it was criticised for its graphic depiction of violence directed toward women.

Contents

 * 1 Plot
 * 2 Cast
 * 3 Production
 * 4 Release
 * 5 Reception
 * 6 See also
 * 7 References
 * 8 External links

Plot
In 1952, Deputy Sheriff Lou Ford (Casey Affleck) is a pillar of the community in his small west Texas town — patient, dependable, and well-liked. Beneath his pleasant facade, however, he is a sociopath with violent sexual tastes. As a teenager, Lou was caught raping a five-year-old girl in the back of a parked car by his adopted brother Mike, who pleaded guilty to the crime and served prison time to protect Lou. After being released, Mike was hired by the construction firm of Chester Conway (Ned Beatty). Mike died on the job after slipping and falling off a beam through several floors in a building under construction. Lou believes that Conway planned the accident.

At the request of Sheriff Bob Maples (Tom Bower), Lou visits Joyce Lakeland (Jessica Alba), a prostitute who is having an affair with Conway's son, Elmer (Jay R. Ferguson). When Joyce objects to Lou's treatment of her and slaps him, he throws her on the bed and uses his belt to beat her until her buttocks are bruised and bleeding. Joyce enjoys pain, and she and Lou begin a passionate love affair. Joyce suggests that Lou would never leave town with her, but they devise a plot to extort $10,000 from the Conways. Sheriff Maples and Chester Conway ask Lou to oversee the pay-off. Lou has another plan: he brutally beats Joyce to death and when Elmer arrives, Lou shoots and kills him. He then plants the gun on Joyce, hoping to make the scene look like the two have killed each other. Joyce survives the ordeal, however, and Conway announces his intention to see her executed for killing Elmer.

Lou's reputation begins to falter: his long-time girlfriend and fiancee Amy (Kate Hudson) suspects that he is cheating on her, and the county district attorney Howard Hendricks (Simon Baker), who has arrived in town to investigate the murders, suspects that Lou could be the killer. Lou is asked to join Sheriff Maples and Conway in taking Joyce to hospital in Fort Worth where doctors can operate on her; Conway wants her alive so he can interrogate her as soon as possible. Lou waits in a hotel room while the surgery takes place. Maples arrives to tell him that Joyce died on the operating table. Lou and Maples return to west Texas by train.

While browsing his bookshelves at home Lou discovers some explicit photographs of a woman that were hidden inside a Bible. The woman was Helene, a housekeeper and babysitter of his youth who bears a resemblance to Joyce. Lou recalls that Helene introduced him to sadomasochism, urging him to strike her like his father did and proclaiming that she loved pain. Lou burns the photos.

Hendricks arrests a local youth, Johnnie Pappas (Liam Aiken), whom Lou has previously befriended, as a suspect in the murders of Elmer and Joyce. He was found with one of the $20 bills Elmer was to give Joyce in the pay-off; Conway had the bills marked in order to blackmail Joyce if she didn't leave town. Because Lou is close to Johnnie, Hendricks asks Lou to persuade him to confess, but it was Lou himself who had given Johnnie the marked $20 bill as a tip after taking it from Elmer. In the prison cell Lou confesses to Johnnie that he was the one responsible. Out of sight Lou hangs Johnnie, making it look like a suicide.

Johnnie's death only makes the town more suspicious of Lou. Journalist and union organizer Joe Rothman (Elias Koteas), who previously suggested that Conway had Lou's foster brother Mike killed, implies that he knows Lou killed Elmer and Joyce and recommends Lou leave town. Lou persuades Amy to elope with him after proposing to her; their love life has become increasingly violent and she acquiesces to his desire to spank her. At first Lou is satisfied, but his homicidal urges begin to resurface and he reflects on the inevitable circumstance of his killing Amy. Analcoholic bum (Brent Briscoe) whom Lou had previously burnt with a cigar has been trailing Lou and has worked out that he was responsible for the murders of Elmer and Joyce and expects $5,000 to keep quiet. Lou agrees to his demands and asks him to come back in two weeks, the date when he and Amy plan to elope. When that day arrives Lou punches and kicks Amy to death in his kitchen, and when the bum enters and sees her body runs for help. Lou chases the bum shouting that he has murdered Amy. Another deputy Jeff Plummer (Matthew Maher) opens fire on the bum and shoots him dead.

The next morning Plummer appears on Lou's porch to tell him that Maples has committed suicide, convinced of Lou's guilt and heartbroken over his crimes. Hendricks and Plummer try to get a confession from Lou, who cockily refuses. They have a letter that Amy intended to give him before they eloped, in which Amy begs him to come clean. Lou is arrested and after a week in prison is sent to an insane asylum. While he is there he suffers hallucinations of a photographic slideshow featuring Amy and Helene on his bedroom wall. After a few weeks, a slick lawyer, Billy Boy Walker (Bill Pullman) has him released and drives him home. Walker has been hired by Joe Rothman to protect the union man from the suggestion that he was also involved in the Conway murder. Lou tells Walker his whole story and concludes that he doesn't want anyone else to die, but hints that his imminent death will not add to the tally as he is "already dead".

Lou, now lost entirely in his own violent fantasies, douses his home in gasoline and alcohol, dresses himself smartly for his own demise and armed with a knife sits waiting in his study for a real or an imagined retribution to arrive. Reality and fantasy blur as police vehicles and armed policemen are seen converging on the house, but looking out of the window Lou sees a car pull up with Hendricks, Conway, Plummer and the resurrected Joyce, scarred but seemingly alive. Joyce tells Lou that she refused to cooperate with the authorities, Lou tells her he loves her and then stabs her. Plummer opens fire, hitting both Joyce and Lou and igniting the gasoline in the house. Outside, the approaching policemen see the house explode in a huge fireball which, if Lou has imagined the previous encounter, he has ignited to kill himself.

Cast[edit]

 * Casey Affleck as Lou Ford, a West Texas deputy sheriff and serial killer.[4]
 * Jessica Alba as Joyce Lakeland, a prostitute.[5]
 * Kate Hudson as Amy Stanton, Ford's schoolteacher girlfriend.[6]
 * Ned Beatty[7] as Chester Conway
 * Tom Bower as Sheriff Bob Maples
 * Elias Koteas[8] as Joe Rothman
 * Simon Baker as Howard Hendricks, a county attorney looking to expose Lou as the killer.[9]
 * Bill Pullman as Billy Boy Walker
 * Brent Briscoe as Bum / The Stranger / Visitor
 * Matthew Maher as Deputy Jeff Plummer
 * Liam Aiken as Johnnie Pappas
 * Jay R. Ferguson as Elmer Conway
 * Caitlin Turner as Helene

Production[edit]
Numerous filmmakers have attempted to adapt Thompson's novel into a film since the mid-1950s. 20th Century Fox originally optioned the project as a possible starring vehicle for Marilyn Monroe around 1956, with Monroe starring as Joyce Lakeland. Marlon Brando was attached to star as Lou Ford. Elizabeth Taylor was considered at the time for the role of Amy Stanton. After Monroe's unexpected death on August 5, 1962, the project was shelved. A film adaptation was eventually made in 1976, with Stacy Keach as Lou Ford and Susan Tyrrell as Joyce Lakeland.

In the mid-1980s, there was another attempt to adapt the book into a film, with Tom Cruise as Lou Ford, Brooke Shields as Amy Stanton, and Demi Moore as Joyce Lakeland. The project was shelved. In the mid-1990s, after the success of Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino was attached to direct the project.[10] Uma Thurman was set to star as Amy Stanton. Juliette Lewis was considered for the part of Joyce Lakeland and Brad Pitt was attached to star as Lou Ford. This effort fell through after the September 11 attacks, because the film script was deemed too violent. Tarantino scrapped everything and started from scratch. In 2003, Andrew Dominik wrote a highly stylized screenplay, and was at one point to direct it. He hoped the film would star Leonardo DiCaprio as Lou Ford, Charlize Theron as Amy Stanton and Drew Barrymore as Joyce Lakeland. Dominik lost interest in doing a film adaptation of a 1950s novel, however, and instead chose to film The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Marc Rocco stepped in, and wanted to cast Casey Affleck as Lou Ford, Reese Witherspoon as Amy Stanton and Maggie Gyllenhaalas Joyce Lakeland.

Release[edit]
Jessica Alba presenting the film inParis, in 2010.

The Killer Inside Me premiered on January 24, 2010 at Sundance Film Festival.[11] In January 2010, IFC Films secured the rights of the film for around$1.5 million[12] and announced the theatrical and VOD platforms release on June 9, 2010.[13] It was nominated for the Golden Bear at the 60th Berlin International Film Festival.[14] It is part of the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival and ran on April 27, 2010.[15] The film had a limited theatrical release starting on June 18, 2010.[16] The DVD and Blu-ray were released on September 28, 2010.

Reception[edit]
The film received generally mixed reviews. Review aggregate Rotten Tomatoes reports that 55% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 124 reviews, with an average score of 5.7/10. The critical consensus is: "The Killer Inside Me is stylish and beautifully shot, but Michael Winterbottom's distance from his characters robs this often brutally violent film of crucial emotional context." [17] Winterbottom, attending the film's world premiere at theSundance Film Festival, got an audience member's review before the credits had finished rolling: "I don't understand how Sundance could book this movie! How dare you? How dare Sundance?"[18] Rachel Cooke of The Observer, after describing a "sickeningly protracted" scene from the film in which Joyce is beaten by Lou, said "I was so queasy, I had to go and stand outside. I thought I might actually faint"; she notes that several of the scenes of violence are "so long and so horribly graphic" and points out that "by lingering only over the violence done to women — by contrast, a male character gets to die off camera — he has, I think, ruined his own picture, drawing the audience's attention away both from its exquisite noir mood, and from Affleck's mesmerising performance. The violence is a bloody blot on an otherwise beautiful canvas."[18]

Stephen Dalton, reviewing the film for The Times after it closed the Berlin Film Festival, acknowledged the controversy over the depiction of violence:[10]

Dalton, giving the film four stars out of five, called it a "thoughtful thriller which will bore some viewers with its low-key pacing, while repelling others with its flashes of sickening brutality. But for the less squeamish among us, The Killer Inside Me is an intelligent and gripping take on classic film noir ingredients."[10] Despite receiving good reviews, Jessica Alba nonetheless still received aGolden Raspberry Award for Worst Supporting Actress for her performance in this film as well as being cited for her work in Little Fockers, Machete and Valentine's Day.