Karla

Girl falls in love with boy, discovers he's a rapist, marries him and colludes in his continued depravity, then gets caught.

Earnest tale told in plain flashback, with no insight on the characters and no interest in the nature of truth and little by way of visceral horror. The killing scenes are tame, giving no sense of the rush of adrenalin in perpetrators or victims, or the ugliness and finality of violent death. So overall it feels like an old-fashioned made for TV movie.

You get to the postscript and find an entirely different character from the one portrayed by the lead actress, and it's a real head scratcher to think they didn't use that angle to mess things up and break from the linear story telling.

Performances are fine. Lighting is mostly bright, so no great moodiness. Music did its job.

Overall: Simple tale of depravity that didn't feel depraved.

Seems there was controversy in Canada over this, and several of the actors repudiated the film, with lurid tales of misconduct on the set. Its real weakness is that it pulls its punches and fails to be nasty enough.

Disorder is accurately diagnosed by her psychiatrist,well-portrayed by veteran actor Patrick Bauchau.

Laura Prepon is believable and cold as Karla Homolka, who was jailed for killing her sister and conspiring with sexual sadist and psychopath Paul Bernardo. He is odiously portrayed by Misha Collins.

The story itself is horrific,and I believe the writer accurately portrayed Karla as borderline psychotic,yet she has a surface normalcy to society,much the same as Ted Bundy and other psychopaths. She is not a sympathetic character, and Prepon delivers a believable performance.

Overall an interesting study,Misha Collins as Bernard is particularly devoid of conscience and detestable,and it would be impossible to explain why any woman would stay with him for love, unless she was indeed psychotic.

I was very disturbed to see some of the comments made about this movie. It was said that "the murder and gratuitous violence scenes were not explicit or even realistic"! They were plenty explicit and realistic, enough that I almost stopped the movie. Also, it has to be understood why Canadians did not support this movie. The victims in this movie were children victims, of a smallish, "quiet calm" community, and they were the children of this community. Imagine if this happened to your next door neighbours child, or YOUR child, and then someone wants to make a movie about it! You would be infuriated! I lived in Welland, Ontario when these people were on the loose. I was 12 years old, and my parents were paranoid nervous wrecks until these people were arrested. The day they were arrested, we did not have any classes, they parked us in front of the TV's to watch the news, and so we would have peace of mind that these evil sickos were off the street, and we were safe from them. They terrorized the communities, even the ones that we have no knowledge of them being in, they were close enough to us, that it was very possible that one of the victims could have been one of my friends, they were just too close to us. So, when you complain that this movie was not real enough, or explicit enough, just remember, it not JUST a movie, it was real life! And what you see in the movie is not even the half of all the horrible things they REALLY did.

Paul Bernardo - probably one of the cruellest serial killers that ever existed. Around 50% of the votes cast so far are 1 and this is understandable, as the subject matter in the movie is probably the darkest and most disturbing that any movie could possibly be- and to make matters worse, its all true. There is a relentless hate for this movie and people are going to vote 1 just to try to discourage other from seeing it, to try and teach Hollywood to stay out of producing tragic events, but where were the 1's for other movies profiting off tragedies, like Schindler's List, Titanic or Monster? Before seeing it, I read from others that the acting in the movie was great, I didn't take the comments seriously, but after seeing it, I am totally impressed with Laura Preppon's talent- I never thought of her as a good actor. She IS Karla Homolka, and although she won't win any Oscars for this role, she has undoubtedly impressed many other critics who may have never suspected she had this talent within her. The only major difference between Karla and Laura is that Homolka was a very small woman- 5'2 or so, while Laura is very tall, 5'11. When watching the introducing scene, I had doubts about how good Misha Collins would be, but by the time we reached the first perversion, he turns out to be quite a good actor, although I'd say Preppon definitely gives a better performance. People object to this movie for many reasons, and one is that some believe it's too sympathetic to Karla, but I would disagree. True, it is narrated from real life transcripts that Karla gave to her pscyhiatrist,and many see that as a reason to distrust the movie, but what she tells and what we see are sometimes different and the movie does NOT omit ANY of the evil deeds she committed. However, A LOT of the sadistic things that Paul did were omitted in this brief 81 minute movie- and that is why I called it a 'toned-down' version of the gruesome events, more toned-down that most people would suspect it would be. In this way, the violence is not gratuitous, but there are *surprise!* many cringe-inducing moments. One flaw I see in this movie is the improper allocation of time to various events. The movie covers 90% of the key events, but there was no mention of the videotapes being found, (which completely turned the case upside-down) nor was there any time giving us background information about Bernardo or Holmolka, which we see in other serial killer movies like Monster (we see Aileen as a teenager). I may be wrong, but I think the chronological order between various events may have been shuffled in one case, but probably for editing reasons. I doubt any reviews that IMDb can offer will make a difference in whether one sees it or not, as either you can tolerate watching difficult things or you cannot. However, I agree with CBC's review that is 'an above-average' movie and while being tough to watch, it can also be a tool to reinforce the message that appearances can be deceiving.

I'm rarely a fan of one star ratings, as they are usually reserved for the ignorant, uncultured, or extremely bored. This time, I'm afraid, there really is no choice but to rate this as lowly as possible. The truth of who this woman is was not demonstrated in this film, and that served to inappropriately victimize a naturally born psychopath while barely paying respect to the victims: Tammy Homolka, Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy. This murderess is portrayed as a classic Stockholm's sufferer, but the overwhelming evidence proved she was anything but. I know I'm writing this in 2020, and this film was made a little over 10 years prior, but it doesn't erase the fact that we need to stop telling stories like this unless they are true to the facts and serve to respect and pay homage to the victims. When you can walk away from a true crime story without quite remembering the names of the victims, the story has failed. Everyone involved with this production should be ashamed. I refused to finish out of respect for Leslie, Kristen, Tammy, and loved ones still reeling from this unbelievable nightmare created by two narcissistic, psychopathic bags of flesh and bone.