The Hunt for the BTK Killer

I found it to be a chilling portrayal if BTK. Robert Forster was great and btk actor was on point. No oscar worthy, but better than everything else out there.

Another made-for-TV serial killer movie "based on a true story" that tries to introduce one or two notes of originality into a cinematic pattern that is so nearly exhausted it's staggering on its pins.

One such attempt is in the musical score. Ordinarily with a story about a serial killer, we'd expect violins tremolo until they shriek madly as the hatchet descends. Not here.

As Dennis Rader, the "BTK Killer", Gregg Henry, in a completely satisfying performance, goes about his business of seeing to it that the community's lawns are properly mowed and that his victims are tortured, raped, and killed, and he's accompanied by some kind of Orff Schulwerk music filled with glockenspiels and a cute pizzicato melody. Well, why not? It worked in "Badlands." But when the rubber meets the road and there is action on the screen, Tree Adams, the composer, goes nuts and the air is filled with the loud racket of pots and pans being clanged together. It may be innovative but it's distracting too.

Robert Forster does a decent job as the detective in charge but because of lax direction or some other reason he's not as convincing as he was in "Jackie Brown." He's given a voice-over narration that's stale. Something like, "I realized we had to go through this to be a better people." Ugh. It's too bad that the narration is so full of old saws and empty observations because the plot really needs something to tie the episodes together. The killings themselves aren't a problem because they're not lingered over and are only suggested in double- and triple exposure. But the timeline is warped. There were times when I didn't know whether we were in 1974 or 2004. No kidding.

It isn't a memorable movie but Gregg Henry has the simple, innocent, friendly face of true evil down pat.

As the movie opens, Dennis Rader has been arrested for his string of killings over a period of many years in Wichita, Kansas. Through flashbacks, we see the events leading up to his capture, as well as some of the murders.

Gregg Henry had a very challenging role, and in my opinion, he delivered. Dennis Rader was shown as very normal at times, a kind and caring person. In fact, he was so normal the background music made me think of ice cream trucks. Then he was shown as cruel and unfeeling, but not in a situation necessarily related to any murders. Where the murders were planned, Rader was depicted as quite demented and somehow controlled by an unknown force, with background music appropriate to the situation and sometimes so weird it could not even be called music. After his arrest, Rader described what he had done with almost no emotion, as if explaining how he remodeled a house or something, though sometimes he bordered on demented in describing his actions. He seemed to show no remorse, despite being an upstanding member of the community. I am assuming Henry was able to work with footage or good memories to create his impressions of Rader in custody.

The murders were quite scary because of the special editing and visual effects, which may have made them look less graphic but certainly added to the horror of what took place.

Robert Forster did a very capable job as Jason Madiga, a detective on the case. According to what I have read about the case, he was not a real person, but that does not matter. His performance, and the efforts to solve the case, make the movie worthwhile almost as much as Henry's performance.

It was a better than average fact-based TV movie.

Between the years 2000-2010 it was quite popular (and very profitable) to make horror films/thrillers that were based on real- life serial killers. Practically all notorious American serial killers from the second half of the 20th century passed the revue, and the nastiest ones even twice or more, like Ed Gein, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, Charles Starkweather, Albert Fish, John Wayne Gacy, Gary Ridgway, etc. Many of these flicks aspired to be semi- documentaries and as factual as possible, but still most of them are pure rubbish (especially the ones directed by Uli Lommel, of course). Dennis Rader, more commonly known as BTK-killer, from Wichita Kansas also had the questionable honor to form the main subject of at least three contemporary low-budgeted horror flicks; one directed by the aforementioned Uli Lommel (I rather die than ever having to watch that one), one starring the legendary Kane Hodder in the titular role (which allegedly is quite decent) and this modest but surprisingly adequate made-for-television and documentary-styled thriller.

It's fairly obvious why the film industry wanted to exploit the story of BTK – short for "Bind Torture Kill" – as much as possible. Even though he committed his vile crimes, the murders of at least 10 innocent people, 10 to 30 years earlier, Rader only got apprehended in 2004 following a massive police hunt that he pretty much set into motion himself. Rader was always proud of the unsolved murders and suffered from a tremendous ego, so he really couldn't accept that a random writer/profiler was psycho-analyzing him on television. Rader, now a happily married and respectable church-community member, started sending clues and evidence of his old murders to the press and the authorities. He gradually became more careless and megalomaniac, which led to his arrest. "The Hunt for BTK Killer" focuses primarily on the police investigation, but also follows around Dennis Rader in his private life, during the preparations of the correspondences in his tool shed and as he's stalking a potential new victim. There are also a couple of sequences in the courtroom that feature blurry flashbacks of the murders committed in the early seventies and eighties. I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of this film. It doesn't aim to be overly sensational but provides a solid rundown of the facts, as well as a realistic impression of the fear and paranoia that reign in a small town when it gets faced with the return of an old boogeyman. Robert Forster's performance comes across as fatigue, but that's also what you expect his character to feels like after chasing a killer for three decades. Gregg Henry's performance as Dennis Rader is more than praiseworthy, as he manages to find the ideal balance between menacing creep and exemplary community hero. One more element that really struck me as far above average is the score and effective use of music. The soundtrack is moody and ominous, and sometimes it even sounds as if the tunes could easily have been composed by Hans Zimmer.

This was a historically-accurate depiction of what really occurred. This was overall a good movie. Henry did an exceptional job with the voice and the mannerisms of Rader. Well done.