Diary of a Serial Killer

I wouldn't go as far as to say that this film is the worst film I've seen (I've certainly seen worse) but it is definitely in the top 10 worst films I've seen.

They had a good idea for a film but spoiled it with poor acting and historical inaccuracy. The ending was very rushed and poorly thought out and it feels like the film spends ages building up to something but doesn't provide what it built up to. Parts of the film don't make sense. The way they portrayed Ed Gein and Dahmer was very inaccurate (how ever Richard Ramirez' portrayal was somewhat accurate).

All in all, the film is a waste of time and money and I wouldn't even recommend to the most die hard serial killer obsessives.

A young journalist is out for revenge against the serial killer who killed her mother; the serial killer's niche, is that he is/was inspired by the hilariously talented trio of Gein, Ramirez, and Dahmer.

Copycat for some reason wants to be some sort of intelligent, analytical thesis on what makes a killer, but, it fails miserably. For starters, the ending is idiotic; heavily placed so that the message the movie is providing tries to be truthful and convincing. The rest of the movie basically revolves around vignettes (or flashbacks) from the lives of Gein, Dahmer, and Ramirez, and the "relationship" between the journalist with the cop who helps her, and the serial killer who she wants to kill. Everything is kept at a nice pace, but the clichéd, redundant script and weak acting f*ck everything up to the extent that you don't care for any nice pace; you just want the damn movie to end.

The cinematography and editing are adequately done, the main score is effective, and the gore is bland for the most part.

Either way you look at this movie, be it from a critical or gore-fix (?) point of view, you should skip it. Hell, you shouldn't even read the plot synopsis on the back of the DVD box. Ignore this crap fest.

3.0/10

It actually makes a lot of sense. Serial killers are people, and much of people's lives are somewhat boring. If this moving was attempting to capture the abject boredom of having a compulsion to kill, it has succeeded admirably. Two problems: 1. I don't think that was the filmmaker's intent and 2. Even if it was, this would still be completely unentertaining.

The first issue is the pacing of the film. You ever hear how great directors help tell their story with every single frame of film? Now think of the opposite. Vast portions of the film are spent watching cars drive, birds chirp, people doing various things with phones, and people just plain standing around. It's incredible that the film is only 85 minutes, because it looks like they could have shortened it to 30.

The second issue is that they clearly have not mastered "show, don't tell." Having wasted dozens of minutes on people standing around, walking around, and sepia toned near-stills... they narrate. And oh how they narrate. You start feeling like you're watching a series of 15 minute long Twilight Zone episodes with the requisite intro and exit statements. And when they're not flat-out narrating, they're having the actors speak exposition to each other.

And lastly, close to half the film seems to be spent on flashback re-tellings of random real life serial killers. It leads you to wonder: how much new story is actually in this movie? It runs 85 minutes. Subtract off 10 for credits and opening. Maybe 1/3 of the rest is random real stories adapted (poorly). And 1/2 of the whole movie is wasting useful story telling time through slow pacing, in what I can only imagine was an attempt to be "suspenseful." So, if you watch REAL carefully- you might see about 25 minutes of real movie in here.

Though well... the production values were pretty good (despite a deep seeded love of sepia) and the actors were competent. So that's something. And makes it perhaps even sadder that they didn't seem to have that much to say.