Canada doubles for Boston in this 2013 whoisit thriller starring Sarah Jane Morris and a load of other folk you haven’t heard of but maybe vaguely recognise from other low rent offerings.
Sarah Jane is ‘Karyn’ and unfeasibly attractive homicide detective with more baggage than the carousel at Glasgow airport. Her Dad was a serial killer and that makes her really focused on catching serial killers. Can’t beat that for motivation. We open with her blowing one away in the midst of his manikin dinner party - she might have waited for the After Eights to be served. This his her third kill and technically makes her a serial killer. Her boss, who is a terrible actor, tells her to calm down, she’s got 24 hours, no place for mavericks on his force - the full cliché bargain bucket.
Karyn is concerned that two recent murders bear the hallmarks of ’The Hades Killer’ a mass murdered who claimed nine kills in six months before disappearing. Her own father was a suspect but he was too busy killing other folk, so it wan’t him.
Karyn is labelled ‘Dirty Harriet’ by her colleagues and her slimy partner who also used to be her fiancé. She’s made to take psych sessions as a result of all her killing but the Hades bodies keep racking up - as does the list of suspects.
She runs down some leads and fights off a slime ball reporter as well as the meddling FBI. Soon we’re up to six suspects - basically the entire cast.
Who can it be? The second on my list!
This was a workable police procedural with a bog standard serial killer case worked though using the tried and tested clichés of the genre - keep him on the phone while we run a trace!
They did well to have multiple plausible suspects, with my top tip of the butch woman in the parking lot proving to be a red herring. The film’s ‘TV movie’ origins we made clear with low production values and a really tame sex scene that was over before it started and with those sticky sheets that keeps everything out of view.
The lead reminded me of that woman out of ‘Criminal Minds’ and she did well with a character arc that was all over the place - she basically ran around shooting or arresting everyone she encountered.
The subplot with the ex-boyfriend partner didn’t convince, even when he said his new girlfriend was pregnant and we get a sad music cue - still a chance!
The killer, who we usually saw in shadow, was poorly developed with his killing technique being shooting people in the head - Buffalo Bill this was not.
To be fair to the film it kept me guessing - guessing how the implausible plot and thin characters made it off the script and into production!
This was a decent afternoon filler with a glamorous lead, sex free sex scenes and a plot you could drive several buses through.
W Rating 15/23 Best Bit : Rooftop dance
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