EVERY TOWN HAS ITS MONSTERS BUT ‘I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER’
“You don’t know the things I’ve done, or that I will do.”
A dazzlingly original, darkly funny and disturbing gem with a genre-bending twist, about a small town teenager in the US, obsessed with serial killers, who unwittingly discovers the identity of the killer who has been slaughtering residents for body parts.
Featuring a star-making lead performance from 17-year-old Max Records, and an extraordinary turn from Back To The Future’s legendary Christopher Lloyd,
I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER is the most sheerly entertaining and audaciously offbeat offering since Donnie Darko hit cinema screens.
A big hit when it premiered at the South By Southwest Film Festival in March, and was a must-see film at the prestigious BFI London Film Festival. It proves that left field indie cinema is alive and kicking, even if the Clayton County killer’s victims aren’t. “Hit the switch John…”
I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER, directed by Billy O’Brien (who made the award-winning Irish horror hit Isolation), although deliciously unclassifiable, is best described as a sensationally strange horror/sci-fi coming- of-age black comedy. Adapted from the first in a series of novels from bestselling YA author Dan Wells, the tremendously sharp script left-foots the audience at every moment, right up to the deliriously unexpected and thrilling finale.
Lead actor, 17-year-old Max Records, is superb as the teen-turned-detective John Wayne Cleaver, torn between struggling with his own demons, and a real one.
The supporting cast includes the legendary Christopher Lloyd (Doc from Back to the Future) on fabulous form as the Blake-quoting pensioner with a dark secret, Breaking Bad’s Laura Fraser, and a scene stealing turn from Raymond Brandstrom as John’s best buddy Max.
A British/Irish co-production shot in Minnesota, the same icy small town locale as Fargo, and with similarly strange things afoot, the film refuses to play by the rules, mixing a quirky coming-of-age comedy with the pathos of small town life, and adding dashes of gruesome gore with surreal and heart-stopping moments of science fiction shock, like Napoleon Dynamite crossed with Six Feet Under or Jack Sholder’s tongue in cheek sci-fi horror The Hidden mixed up with Dexter, shot through the retro vibe of TV hit Stranger Things.
Filmed on 16mm by award-winning director of photography Robbie Ryan (Slow West, I, Daniel Blake), the film has a beautifully distinctive and unsettling look, and one of the best end shots in recent memory. Matched with a haunting soundtrack, I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER feels wonderfully different and evocative.
I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER will be released in cinemas & on demand 9th December 2016.