The Killer Inside Me

An utterly repellent and pointless exercise in cinematic sadism, the would-be film noir The Killer Inside Me easily ranks among the worst of 2010. Based on a lousy book by Jim Thompson, The Killer Inside Me follows assistant sheriff Lou Ford (Casey Affleck, wispier than a cotton swab), a conspicuously law-abiding schizophrenic with a shallow-seated penchant for violence against women. An affair with a fiery prostitute (Jessica Alba) inspires a revenge plot against the town fat cat, which spirals into a series of violent murders and betrayals. Director Michael Winterbottom (A Mighty Heart) and screenwriter John Curran seem to think that clumsy plotting and wafer-thin characterizations are signifiers of indie cool, as indicated by their shoehorning cutesy soundtrack selections wherever possible. Winterbottom has made good films, but this one’s as bad as his similarly overheated and unwatchable 1995 movie Butterfly Kiss.