You can now watch a serial killer movie on Prime Video that would have deserved more attention in the cinema. Including: the new Marvel villain in Fantastic Four.
Catch the Killer went somewhat under the radar in cinemas last year, but the serial killer thriller definitely deserves a chance. The cast of Shailene Woodley (Big Little Lies), Ben Mendelsohn (Rogue One), Jovan Adepo (3 Body Problem) and future Galactus actor Ralph Ineson is already impressive
On Prime Video: This is what awaits you in the thriller with Shailene Woodley
Shailene Woodley plays Eleanor Falco, a little light in the Baltimore police department. She once dreamed of a career in the FBI. Now she’s on shift as a patrolwoman in the big city. Then a sniper begins a series of seemingly random murders. Revelers on a New Year’s Eve. Visitors to a shopping center. No one is safe.
(Shailene Woodley, Jovan Adepo and Ben Mendelsohn in Catch the Killer)
Eleanor joins the investigation and gains the trust of FBI agent Geoffrey Lammark (Ben Mendelsohn), who leads the search for the killer.
In Catch the Killer, familiar places turn into death traps
Serial killer films usually thrive on ornamentally decorated crime scenes, perfidious cat and mouse games with the investigators and the like. Every death is a clue, a piece of the puzzle in the overall work of art. Catch the Killer pushes the genre in a different direction. The acts in the movie shock with their arbitrariness and, if you like, listlessness. Human lives are snuffed out like clay pigeons and even when the identity of the killer is eventually revealed, a feeling of gnawing emptiness and senselessness remains.
Nevertheless, the film by director and co-writer Damián Szifron (Wild Tales) is never cynical. The professional idealism of Mendelsohn and Woodley’s characters heats up the film to a humanistic basic temperature. Neither the killer nor the hubris of the authorities, who put many obstacles in the way of the investigating duo, can dampen this. However, Catch the Killer is at its most exciting when familiar everyday locations turn into death traps. And when the script follows the growing panic to its logical, bloody next step. Then the violence spreads through the city like a column of dominoes.
