Netflix And Chill: The Killer (2023)

If you go into The Killer expecting a standard hitman/revenge movie then I don't think you're going to enjoy it. You cannot go into this with certain expectations, and I would quickly warn people who may assume that they're going to have a perfect blend of cool and controlled David Fincher style and cool and controlled lead character. While things may seem to match up on the surface, the whole thing is actually an amusing dark comedy that shows us someone holding on to their superb natural instincts while everything else starts to slip through their fingers.

Michael Fassbender stars as The Killer. He lives by a number of rules that we hear repeated, mantra-like, in voiceover narration. "Stick to your plan. Anticipate, don't improvise. Trust no one. Never yield an advantage. Fight only the battle you're paid to fight." He also believes that you should forbid empathy, because empathy is a weakness. "Empathy is vulnerability". When a job goes wrong, however, The Killer ends up seeking revenge, and this shows us how often he breaks his own rules. He's not actually that good at living by his own code, but repeating it to himself seems to show how often he spends time convincing himself that he belongs in the life he has chosen. 

Adapted from a graphic novel series by Alexis Nolent and Luc Jacamon, this is a long-overdue opportunity for writer Andrew Kevin Walker and director Fincher to fully collaborate again. The two last worked together on the superb Seven, but it's interesting to view The Killer as something that works as very much a companion piece to Fight Club. The script isn't as packed with quotable dialogue, but everything here, whether spoken word or silent expression/movement, works exactly as intended. You get repeated mantras that are used for self-delusion (and are lies), you get the use of corporations assisting the hasty demise of characters, and you have an apparent code of ethics that ends up warped and broken as a main character strives towards what ends up being their ultimate goal. It's also a film that may well be taken by many viewers as something it very much isn't. Maybe.

Fassbender feels like he was born for this role, a captivating presence able to keep his face completely blank as he interacts with people he doesn't view worthy of full engagement. He looks capable enough when it comes to the physical side of things, and the juxtaposition of how things play out onscreen and how the character comments on his own approach becomes funnier and funnier as the divide between perception and reality gets bigger. Charles Parnell and Kerry O'Malley shine in a couple of key scenes, Sala Baker casts an impressively large shadow as a potential target named "The Brute", and both Arliss Howard and Tilda Swinton have fantastic moments in the third act, the latter coming seriously close to stealing the movie with her blend of calm defiance and slight regret.

Hilariously soundtracked by a selection of tunes from The Smiths, there's also extra laughs mined from Fincher upending some action movie standards. Whether or not people enjoy the joke is a different matter, but I liked watching a chase sequence that wasn't really a chase, miscalculations made by someone who needs to rely on precision, and a messy fight that was as dark and disorientating as it might feel when right in the middle of it.

I've already seen many people dismiss this as a fairly empty and pointless work, a lesser entry from a master director, but I would respectfully disagree. It's not a full return to form, considering how high the Fincher highs are, but I think it's his best film in over a decade (note, I have STILL to see Mank, just too many movies and never enough hours in every day). It will be interesting to see if others start to agree with me as more time passes.

8/10

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Brainscan (1994)

Horror movies have always incorporated popular trends, and have always had fun with hobbies and interests that have been used as scapegoats by some scare-mongering news outlets. Whether it's the dangers of heavy metal, the perils of watching other horror movies, or videogames. And Brainscan is one of a number of movies to remind you that videogames are a corrupting influence on the youth of today. Well, the youth of the early 1990s, which means Edward Furlong.

Furlong plays Michael, a young man who ends up getting a CD-ROM of a game that allows him to commit violent crimes without fear of any real consequences. Except there does end up being consequences. Encountering a figure, The Trickster (T. Ryder Smith), who steps out of the screen, Michael finds himself in real danger. There's a detective (Hayden, played by Frank Langella) on the trail of a killer, and a young woman (Kimberly, played by Amy Hargreaves) who could become the next victim.

Written by Andrew Kevin Walker (yes, the man who would give us Seven just one year later), Brainscan is one of those horror movies that gets almost everything wrong. It desperately wants to make a memorable character with The Trickster, but fails, and none of the big plot points are as nasty and violent as they should be, which leaves the whole thing feeling far too take, especially for those who would have been the target audience for this in 1994.

Director John Flynn just doesn't have any handle on the material, as weak as it is, and makes a lot of wrong decisions. Had The Trickster been a better character then focusing on him would have been a good move, perhaps even giving him some more screentime (although he gets plenty), OR there could have been an attempt to make things even more complex between Langella's detective and Furlong's character, who keeps appearing in the wrong place at the wrong time. Considering how much better Langella is than anyone else in the movie, that could have greatly improved things.

Furlong is okay in the main role, but he's not someone I usually consider the best first choice for any role, and that is also the case here. He does what is asked of him though, moving from cocky teen to scared victim as it becomes clear that he may have actually committed crimes that will get him a hefty prison sentence. Langella is so good in his role here that I wish he'd been given similar roles in many other horror movies from about this time. In fact, I can't deny that I imagined a little fantasy universe in which Langella got the John Saxon role in the Elm Street series, and I wasn't disappointed. Smith is lacking a special quality needed to help make his character more entertaining, while both Hargreaves and Jamie Marsh (as a friend named Kyle) don't get time to make any strong impression.

Fun to watch once as a kind of relic from the 1990s, Brainscan isn't one that you should ever be too bothered about having missed off your viewing schedule. If the opportunity arises, decide whether or not you want to give it your time. It's quite poor, but it's not absolutely awful.

4/10

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