Call me dead inside but I didn't have as tough a time getting through this as the reputation seemed to suggest. This violence puts you inside the mind of a serial killer and puts you along for the ride with them, something that Angst did well before it. I found myself thinking just as much about the survivors and the people Henry decides not to kill in this movie just as much as the victims. I kept thinking about how fortunate they are or why Henry decided to let them live. This movie never presents Henry with an antagonist, an authority figure out to catch him, and it never really gives him any consequences. In movies the audience needs something to believe in and there are points throughout this story where the audience might think Henry has turned a corner but he hasn't. Because killing is so simple for him you start to think about how simple it is.
The film starts with serial killer Herny Lee Lucas (Michael Rooker) getting something to eat at a diner. The film then shows the store across from the diner and shows the two people running it have been killed by Henry. The camera goes into other places such as Henry's hotel room and it shows he killed a prostitute. Another dead body is seen in a river and because the movie plays the sounds the people make when Henry kills them you know he has done it. Meanwhile Henry takes in a hitchhiker carrying a guitar. Meanwhile Otis Toole (Tom Towles) picks up his sister Becky (Tracy Arnold) from the airport. Henry is living with Otis a former convict.
Henry comes home with the guitar saying he "picked it up." While Otis goes to his parole officer Henry is seen doing his job as a house cleaner and he follows one woman into her house and we see her strangled. Becky and Henry connect while playing a game of cards and she asks him how he killed his mother, something Otis had told her about. Henry has given three different methods so far, stabbed, strangled and beaten with a baseball bat. It would seem that whenever he kills anyone he is actually killing her again in his mind.
While out with Otis Henry strangles two prostitutes and introduces Otis to his world saysing "its them or us." When Otis' television breaks they go out to a black market dealer to get a new one and kill him when he gets mad they won't pay him. They go kill a random driver on the highway after Otis says he feels like killing someone. Henry and Otis start videotaping the murders with the camcorder they stole from the black market dealer. They go and kill a family in a home invasion. Henry explains to Otis that always using a different method and doing different things with the body afterwards doesn't establish a pattern for the cops to track.
Becky and Henry go for a steak dinner and Otis interrupts them when they are starting to have sex. Henry goes out for a pack of cigarettes and when he gets back Otis is trying to rape Becky. Becky stabs Otis in the eye with a comb and Henry finishes the job. Becky and Henry then leave for Henry's sister's ranch in California saying they will send for Becky's daughter when they arrive. After staying in a hotel Henry drops a bloodied suitcase on the road before continuing on his journey alone.
There are a lot of filmmaking moments I enjoyed here. The slow zoom outs and zooms. The first shot of the movie has that as the camera twists around slowly but also pulls back from a woman's eyes that you think at first could be staring but really she is dead. That sets the tone well for the film. There are some great practical effects in this as well. The lady with the Coke bottle shoved through her face is one of them. The opening theme with the two chords is great and iconic. I enjoy Michael Rooker's understated performance at times. He is polite and almost reserved when he isn't in serial killer and that almost comes across when he kills people as he kills just to kill it seems like. Otis has way more fun with the bodies which we see in the home invasion scene and Henry stops him doing that. It is weird to think he has some moral code. The scenes with him and Otis arguing about things like the broken camcorder are actually funny and it is even more disturbing that that is what they argue about. The thing they use to film the killings being lost from them. They never argue over whether what they do is acceptable or not.
This movie makes you think about serial killers and their acts during the time when it was made. When you read things about real serial killers and see movies like this you realize a couple of things. It was so easy for them and they never got caught easy. It's like what Henry says about never establishing a pattern being true. I mean how many people did the likes of Jeffrey Dahmer, Gary Ridgeway and Ted Bundy kill without bieng caught? It's insane to think that. Henry will see a woman alone in her house or walking on the side of the street and then decide to kill her. I think people sometimes are scared of consequences after harming someone and this movie shows someone there doesn't have to be any consequences or any authority around to impose them.
Rating: 9/10
Trivia: Throughout the film any sound of a neck breaking is actually a styrofoam cup being crushed near the microphone.
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