PSYCHO KILLER (2026) was written by Andrew Kevin Walker (BRAINSCAN, David Fincher’s THE KILLER), so obviously it was advertised as “FROM THE WRITER OF SE7EN.” But it’s not that type of movie. It reminded me more of HIGHWAYMEN – an odd, mostly quiet, sometimes audacious serial killer thriller, with a determined protagonist chasing a mysterious weirdo across the country. Its tone is grim and serious while its premise invites you to take part in satanic panic, and maybe if I thought it was trying to convince me that was real I would be bothered by it. Like if it came from Angel Studios. But I was not bothered. I had fun with it.

If you’re expecting something like SE7EN, the cool opening titles don’t necessarily dissuade you. I checked and they are not designed by Kyle Cooper/Imaginary Forces, but by Alexei Tylevich (TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2022, BARBARIAN, REBEL MOON – PART ONE: A CHILD OF FIRE, and ALIEN: ROMULUS). Their film scratches and strobes may owe a debt to Cooper’s work, but they’re tinted red to tell us this is the Devil variant. We see pentagrams, pills, bullets, inverted crosses, negative images of newspaper articles with headlines like “WAVE OF HORRIFIC MUTILATION.”

These are a few of the title character’s favorite things. The movie opens inside his noisy car roaring down the highway, close up on his mirrored glasses (we will never see his face). Played by 6’ 6” ex-WWE wrestler James Preston Rogers (OUTLANDER, DEFENDOR, BEVERLY HILLS COP: AXEL F, Hulk Hogan in WEIRD: THE AL YANKOVIC STORY), he’s a big muscle guy with long hair, trenchcoat, boots, sometimes enjoys a custom gas-mask type mask (pretty cool), always has his voice lowered like he’s a whistleblower having his identity protected in a tv interview. That’s even with the mask off – I’m not sure how he does it.

He’s absolutely a silly character, would’ve fit into a WWE Films horror movie like SEE NO EVIL, so it’s interesting that the filmatism to me is not cheesy in that way. There’s no nu metal (unless you count his mask looking like Slipknot), just occasional snippets of songs by bands called Dark Funeral, Venom and 3TEETH as flavoring for a sparse, feedbacky score by Sven Faulconer (HELLBOY: THE CROOKED MAN, READY OR NOT 2). Director of photographer Magnus Jønck (HOLD THE DARK, HER PRIVATE HELL) gets an eerie look, especially in the dark.

Anyway, we’ve caught this muscleman in the middle of a serial killing spree. He’s drawn enough attention that the press calls him “The Slasher.” So it’s an issue when a state trooper (Stephen Adekolu, SPLITSVILLE) pulls up behind him.

The cop doesn’t turn on his lights, but The Slasher pulls over. The cop walks up and asks him why he stopped. He says he’s tired. Another cop stops to check on the first cop. Jane Archer (Georgina Campbell, BARBARIAN) is his wife. She’s headed home but happens to be there to see The Slasher shoot her husband dead, then back up and ram her car so she can’t follow him.

Jane and The Slasher deal with their problems in different ways. Jane goes to a therapist (Eric Blais, “Half Fromed Djinn #2, WISHMASTER 4: THE PROPHECY FULFILLED) and just sits with her arms crossed and asks “Are we done here?” The Slasher goes to a drugstore at night, murders the pharmacist (Sydney Sabiston, “Weather Person,” NORMAL) on her way out, breaks in and steals a ton of pills. He could’ve waited 30 seconds longer and not killed anybody, but that wouldn’t be his style. (And I guess he wanted her car.)

Other victims are more random, I think. I like when a fairly routine (though atmospheric) roadside murder leads to a survivor (Cassandra Ebner, also played a “Doomed Wife” in TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA) trying to wave down a tanker. As the driver slams on his brakes it tips over and plows right through her. The Slasher takes a step back as it skids across the cement, spraying sparks, then explodes.

He’s got some kind of mission going. He uses a payphone to call in a coded classified ad. It’s funny to hear that voice asking if they accept credit cards.

Meanwhile Jane decides to go vigilante. She travels to talk to the FBI agent on the Slasher case (Michael Antonakos, voice of Batman in the video game Gotham Knights) but he’s like, why the fuck would I talk to some small town Kansas cop about this? But one of his female colleagues (Grace Dove, THE REVENANT) gives her that look that means “later I will secretly meet with you to share what we know.” She says he steals pills, guns, ammo, hand grenades, also TNT from a construction site. (Ooh – that’s not good.) She even takes Jane to a crime scene, a motel room with pentagrams and slogans painted on the walls in blood. It reminds her of a previous mass murderer named Richard Reeves, satanic guy who shot a bunch of people at a church.

This Slasher does his own church killing. He goes into a confession booth to speak in his scary voice to an unsuspecting priest (John B. Lowe, NOBODY 2). I was thinking this was corny – evil satanic guy kills a priest, oooh, so edgy. But when he suddenly rams a long metal straw through the confession window into the poor priest’s throat and greedily slurps blood through it… I mean, okay. Good scene.

When Jane predicts The Slasher’s route well enough to catch up with him at a motel, it seems like it’s got to be a false alarm, it’s so early. But no, she goes into the room and he’s there! But he beats the shit out of her (she does get in a good hit with a Gideon Bible) and throws her through the window.

At about the halfway mark we’re so far off the path of the straight forward satanic murderer movie we seemed to be following that I started to really dig it. His classified ad receives a response that leads him to the mansion of former supermarket magnate turned “great Magus” Mr. Pendleton (Malcolm McDowell, TANK GIRL), sort of an Aleister Crowley dude. His eager assistant Marvin (Logan Miller, A DOG’S PURPOSE) brings The Slasher (introducing himself as Richard) into the candle-lit dining room where Mr. Pendleton is enjoying Chinese takeout and holding court with a bunch of young hipster hangers-on. I like how Richard T. Slasher manages to always have his face shadowed under his hoodie whether he’s alone in a hotel room or at the dinner table.

Mr. Pendleton leads his followers in a “Hail Satan!” and makes a speech about “The golden age of depravity!” and they snort some lines and “our smartest, most committed acolyte” Marvin shows Richard to his room. I just love the tension of wondering if this scary movie slasher really feels a kinship with a bunch of goth piercing enthusiasts mansion-partying in the name of Satan. (Spoiler: he does not.) The moment he gets what he needs (an address) he warns Marvin (who he considers the only real Satanist here) to leave and interrupts Pendleton’s acid orgy by ax-murdering them all in a show-offy slow motion long take. Seeing all the framed photos lining the walls, books on the shelves and stacks of letters everywhere as he’s setting it on fire I got kind of sad for all that history being lost. Even though it’s satanic charlatan history.

Jane just misses him at the mansion so she’s there when the police arrive and gives them an earful about how she was right all along and they better listen to her now. Her righteous speech includes a reference to “the satanic metal band Demonfist,” so they understandably remain skeptical.

I have mixed feelings about the almost random seeming swerve it takes in the last act. The Slasher’s master plan is something out of a different genre. I feel it’s less cool than if it was still cat and mouse horror shit + explosives, but it’s so absurd to see this particular character doing what he does that I gotta respect it. You gotta take risks to be the best psycho killer.

I don’t think the ending landing for me the way it was supposed to. It’s a reveal that cuts away to a metal song and it kinda feels like a “Ha! How you like them apples?” kinda ending, but instead I scratched my head and had to go read articles before I decided what I think it was supposed to mean. And if I do understand it it seems like a misstep because it seems to be the explanation for why he has abilities that until that point he was not established to have.

Jane is a minimalistic character, but that feels to me like the style of the movie. Campbell gives her a pulse. She has little moments like the third separate incident where she gets a shot off at him but yet again he gets away (by knocking her car into a ditch) and she just screams in frustration. Or at the end when she wakes up from a nightmare and I swear she says “oops” more than she screams. But it sounds natural.

I can’t find any information about if this was an early Walker script, but it’s at least adult enough that it was first announced in 2009 as un film de Fred Durst. A year later Gavin Polone took over. He had never directed but was producer of the Walker-scripted 8MM (1999) as well as STIR OF ECHOES, PANIC ROOM and ZOMBIELAND. For more than a decade he continued to not direct, but produced A DOG’S PURPOSE, A DOG’S WAY HOME and A DOG’S JOURNEY before coming back to finally make PSYCHO KILLER with different producers in 2023. Then it sat on the shelf for nearly 3 years before being given a decent sized February release and being destroyed by GOAT and WUTHERING HEIGHTS. I saw trailers and was curious, but was scared off by dog shit reviews (9% on Rotten Tomatoes).

I don’t think it’s a movie for most people, so I’m not too surprised by those reviews. But I am a bit confused by some of the descriptions, like more than one saying it has no sense of atmosphere? I don’t see how you come to that conclusion. I would note that I purposely watched it on Hulu while the pros begrudgingly paid for a matinee, annoyed that there wasn’t a critic’s screening, already convinced it was a piece of shit because it had been shelved. Many of them say that it was obviously some compromised incomplete film, which hadn’t occurred to me – I appreciate that it’s 91 minutes, allows some ambiguity and economically omits some of the story beats and exposition that would be included in many movies without adding anything of value. But on second thought there are some bits (like the cut from the Slasher’s fight with Jane to him leaving a suburban house) that probly did or should’ve had a little more context.

One thing I like about it is maybe what other people wouldn’t: it’s not pretending there’s anything deep to say about serial killers. He wants to be the most evil guy. He wants to kill the most people. He wants to be the best Satanist. He wants to look awesome. He sucks. In a fun way. Look at this asshole:

The initial dismissal definitely helped set expectations, but I think PSYCHO KILLER is an interestingly off-kilter movie, whatever it’s trying to do. Thank you to Dustin, so-and-so and anyone else who recommended it to me in the comments.