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. (read the rest of this shit…)
