Andrew Kevin Walker is a name that looms large over the modern serial killer film genre. The screenwriter broke through in 1995 with the script for David Fincher’s iconic thriller Se7en. That film alone cemented Walker as a formidable creative force, inspiring a wave of similarly focused projects in the decades that followed. He has also written other horror thriller adjacent films, including 8mm, Sleepy Hollow, The Wolfman, and Fincher’s more recent The Killer. For that reason, his return to the genre he helped shape with director Gavin Polone’s 2026 film Psycho Killer carried real weight.
While Psycho Killer has its high points, blending Walker’s knack for tight storytelling and dark humor with moments of sharp craftsmanship, it ultimately feels like a missed opportunity. The film shows flashes of genuine impact but struggles to sustain them. In the end, it becomes a mixed bag that never fully comes together, leaving it stuck as the conflicting sum of its individual parts rather than a cohesive whole.
TOP FIVE THINGS ABOUT “PSYCHO KILLER”
5. The Cold Open
It is a shame that the film does not build toward something more satisfying, because Psycho Killer opens with a remarkably effective prologue. From the very first shot, Gavin Polone collaborates with cinematographer Magnus Jønck and editor Derek Ambrosi to craft a sequence that feels deliberate and controlled. The audience is introduced to the titular antagonist as he drives across the country and encounters a state trooper on the interstate. Every frame of this cold open is dynamically composed and serves a clear narrative purpose.
Through inspired lens choices and inventive use of reflections, nearly every shot captures both action and reaction within the same frame. Paired with Andrew Kevin Walker’s tightly constructed writing and carefully motivated diegetic sound design, the sequence fully delivers. It immediately draws viewers in and establishes a confident tone. Unfortunately, that momentum is almost instantly undercut by one of the film’s more noticeable weaknesses.
4. Weak Spot: The Performances
The performances in Psycho Killer ultimately drag the film down. The marketing leans heavily on comparisons to Se7en, and that association does the movie no favors. Walker’s religiously themed serial killer thriller was elevated by the commanding presence of Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt. It becomes clear early on that Psycho Killer does not have performances of that caliber anchoring its drama.
Most of the acting here feels flat, creating a strange emotional distance between the audience and the characters. Rather than pulling viewers into a gripping pursuit of justice and vengeance alongside the protagonist, the film often feels stiff and detached. The result is a disconnect that clashes with the intensity the story aims to deliver.
3. Weak Spot: The Mansion
Psycho Killer adopts an episodic structure early on, giving its serial killer antagonist space to drift from encounter to encounter. Some of these sequences work surprisingly well, allowing Andrew Kevin Walker’s script and Gavin Polone’s direction to take center stage. In those moments, the film feels sharp and controlled. Unfortunately, the longest of these detours is also the most unnecessary, grinding the film’s momentum to a halt in a way it never fully recovers from.
The extended visit to a Satan-worshipping zealot’s mansion, all in pursuit of a thin piece of information obtained through even thinner logic, might have played as a darkly comic bit on the page. On screen, it collapses under its own weight. The performances in this stretch are particularly grating, though Malcolm McDowell at least injects some flavor with his pointed delivery of “sweet and sour sauce.” Even so, the sequence builds to what is easily the film’s weakest scene.
The climax of this segment features the killer slaughtering everyone in the mansion, staged as a supposed single continuous shot packed with speed ramping and slow motion. The quotation marks are necessary because the illusion never convinces. The stitching is obvious, the blocking is awkward, and the staging feels chaotic rather than controlled. Instead of heightening tension, the scene becomes visually messy and dramatically hollow, layering misguided stylistic choices into one prolonged misfire that significantly drags the film down.
2. A Go-For-Broke Finale
I enjoyed Osgood Perkins’ Longlegs from a few years back, but remember being really underwhelmed when its Revelations-indebted serial killer tale just kind of culminated in haunted dolls and other nonsense. To this end, Psycho Killer kind of plays as something Walker banged out in a weekend after seeing Longlegs and feeling similarly disappointed in the finale, because it’s third act goes to the kinds of over-the-top, bombastic places you kind of feel like Longlegs was initially heading to.
Does it work? Not always, but I do at least appreciate the sheer level of go-for-broke ambition on display. It feels big, climactic, and apocalyptic in a way that capitalizes on the threads sewn throughout the prior two acts, and Walker does just enough to make it all feel tonally consistent.
1. The Truck Scene
This is a stupid thing to have at number one, but so be it. One of the killer’s off-shoot murder adventures early on sees him murdering a couple changing their tire on the side of the road. Up until this point in the film, Psycho Killer has remained an endearingly low-budget affair, with minimal scope. In fact, given the fact that it’s distributed by 20th Century Studios and features some occasionally wonky lighting, you’d be forgiven for mistaking it as a straight-to-Hulu original at times.
But during this scene, the film turns those very expectations against the viewer, raises the stakes, expands the scope, and lands a good gag all in one. When the surviving half of the couple attempts to flag down a trucker driving by, in a scene highly reminiscent out of Texas Chain Saw Massacre and a million ripoffs since then, the film decides to take a hard-left turn into a bombastic, explosive subversion, and I just got a lot of joy out of this moment.
RGM GRADE
(C)
Psycho Killer is not an awful film by any means; it has some real moments of inspiration and craft that reach some genuinely impressive heights. However, the film as a whole is less than the sum of its parts, especially given that the literal final moments of the film seem to reveal a half-assed twist of sorts that recontextualizes the entire film in a way that is less than flattering. Odd, inconsistent, and occasionally frustrating, Psycho Killer definitely doesn’t live up to Walker’s previous works, but it’s also never not kind of fascinating to behold.
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