![]() Like such sobering portraits, The House That Jack Built gives us access. These films make us question the nature of empathy and humanity, as well as the fragility of the human mind – but, crucially, the best of them steer away from pop psychology and do not attempt to give answers they do not have. In this context, even the most intricate masterplan cannot legitimise a killing. No matter how well we might know the character, we will never see anything in his life that explains or justifies murderous tendencies.Īt the same time, those films’ matter-of-fact aesthetic returns serial murder to the realms of everyday life, restating the horror of murder and demythologising the killer. These films tease us proximity to the killer, only to show that closeness reveals nothing. In Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, 10 Rillington Place and The Boston Strangler, the camera stays close to the murderer throughout, following him both as he commits his crimes and as he leads the rest of his otherwise mundane life. Other, more socially conscious films have aimed for a sobering portrayal of the serial killer: not as a man with a plan, but simply as a man who kills. Similarly, The House That Jack Built gives Jack the stage as he himself tells his life story. In Seven, John Doe forces the police to follow his labyrinthine plan. In The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal Lecter literally teaches FBI agent Clarice Starling how to think like a serial killer. At a loss for clues or any reasonable motive, the detectives in these movies have no choice but to follow the killer’s warped logic. In a series of films – Seven, The Bone Collector, Copycat, Fallen – an intricate and sophisticated motive filled the void of the serial killer’s inexplicable cruelty, transforming the criminal into a mastermind always one step ahead of the police. In the 90s and early noughties, following the success of The Silence of the Lambs, the serial killer suddenly became Hollywood’s favourite movie villain. Photograph: Allstar/Zentropa Entertainmentsīut more respectable Hollywood thrillers have also been guilty of playing with the figure of the serial killer and of more problematic pathologising. The unknowability of the serial killer – how could anyone actually do such things? – is used in these genre movies to construct an unreasonable killing machine for the sake of horror entertainment, creating a kind of pleasure removed from any sort of reality.ĭeconstructing the 90s pulp thriller … The House That Jack Built. ![]() More narrative tools than human beings, they hunt down the innocent and not so innocent. Here, such killers straightforwardly personify bloodlust and cruelty. On one level, the extreme violence of The House That Jack Built – in which Matt Dillon’s Jack murders and mutilates his victims – is near identical to that of slasher cinema, where serial murderers remain staple characters with little furore. Serial killing is one of the most disturbing and brutal of real-world crimes, so what is the value of audiences putting themselves through witnessing it at the cinema? ![]() As it goes on theatrical release, it is agood moment to reflect on the worth and appeal of serial killer movies. Graphic scenes showing the murder of women and children, their bodies mutilated, prompted over a hundred walkouts at its Cannes premiere. L ars von Trier’s searing portrait of a serial killer The House That Jack Built arrived to instant controversy. ![]()
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