Konterr Brilliant and touching

Mehdi Hoffman There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

Payno I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Catherina If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

johannes2000-1 Wow, this movie was really a surprise! I expected a simple scifi or horror flick, but this turned out as a very stylish art-house movie. Yes, still with the surreal scifi elements in it, but these are not so much the focus of the movie, it's more about the way the main character John Wayne (excellently played by Max Records) comes to grip with the strange goings-on and with his own demons. The whole movie is very athmospheric, the icy snow-covered little town, the dark nights, the taciturn people. It all reminded me a bit of "Let me in". Although everything goes very slow, with few dialogue, it kept me on the edge of my chair, all the time wondering where things would go next. The acting of the whole cast is fine, but as I already said young Max Record really excells, he sure is a promise for the future!

jimbo-53-186511 In the small mid-western town of Clayton County, a serial killer is running rampant and one particular young man John Cleaver (Max Records) becomes interested in the case and starts to use his own skills to track down the killer. When he eventually discovers who the killer is he finds himself on a dangerous collision course with the serial killer in what becomes a perilous battle-of-wits...The main draw with this film (at least in its early stages) is Max Records; he plays a fairly interesting character even if he falls into the usual cliché of being the 'weird kid at high school.' He's a sociopathic kid with obsessive tendencies (in his case he is obsessed with serial killers and the inner workings of their minds). The foundations of the story are promising, but the actual results here are rather meagre; given the way the story began to develop I was really hoping for a good battle-of-wits or cat and mouse game between John and our serial killer, but it never really manifests itself in this manner and the film never becomes as exciting or tense as it could have been.I Am Not A Serial Killer has supernatural undercurrents to it's theme in respect of the serial killer, but the whole basis of this story is rather flimsy and poorly explained; I understand that he's been possessed or is perhaps a ghost of some description, but how did all this come about? Also why was his desire to kill subdued for such a long time? Has he been hibernating? His face is also displayed on the news on a regular occurrence, but no-one recognises him?? Yes I know he's a lot older, but you'd still think that someone would recognise him...One other thing that I noticed was in the scene where John is in the phone box talking to the serial killer there is lots of snow all over the place - yet in the subsequent scene when the serial killer chases him for about 100 yards all of the snow seems to disappear, then in the next scene there's snow everywhere?? I presume that the explanation for this is that it was filmed over several months and at different times of the year, but filmmakers really should check their editing and continuity as errors like this are glaringly obvious and look rather amateurish.The strong links with this film are Max Records who plays the sociopathic odd kid to near perfection and Christopher Lloyd who is also excellent in his respective role and is both creepy and unnerving - although he does seem to mumble some of his dialogue at times making it difficult to decipher what he's saying. The other players do OK with what they have to work with, but this picture belongs to Max Records and Christopher Lloyd.I was originally going to rate the film with a 6 out of 10 because on the whole I found it quite enjoyable, but it lost a star for its rather dumb ending which could perhaps be explained by its supernatural overtones, but it was silly and ridiculous and the end result was something that was more funny than scary. It has some interesting elements, but it also has a lot working against it resulting in a split-decision verdict from this reviewer.

wheresjoeysmovie It is such a tragedy when a film is so well done and then BAM- it goes to hell at the end. Max Records gives a fantastic performance of a teenager whose dark impulses frighten those around him because they do not understand the mindset of someone different. He is diagnosed as a sociopath from one of the most unethical doctors on film. He lacks empathy and it affects his life significantly. Despite his difficulty expressing or understanding empathy, he is drawn to help an elderly man next door (a great Christopher Lloyd) with secrets of his own. In the meantime, people are dying. This movie went so many interesting places and I loved some of the territory I could identify with. The performances were also top- notch. And then BAM- the ending takes all the best parts of the script and shreds them and wastes so much of the potential of this story. I enjoyed everything until the last ten minutes so much that I still had to give it a 6. It is worth the watch for how good it was and what it could have been with an ending grounded in reality. I understand that it is based on a book- but the book should have had a different ending too if it resembles this story the same way.

Nick Duguay Reminiscent of the work of Cronenberg, particularly his pre- 2000's era, I Am Not a Serial Killer was a much better watch than I had expected. As some have pointed out, it is a slow burner, but I think that's necessary to give us insight and character development. At it's core, IANASK is a character study of our protagonist, John Cleaver. Is John Cleaver destined to be a serial killer? Is he a sociopath? Is he good, is he evil? These are the questions we find ourselves asking time and time again throughout the film as his words and actions contradict themselves and each other over and over. John Cleaver is a teenager and with all of the issues that face any normal teenager he also has to deal with some extremely difficult and strange problems. He is misunderstood, he doesn't know how to express himself, he is unsure of his feelings and his identity. If this movie had been gutted of the sci-fi aspect I am perfectly confident that this would have been a wonderful quality drama focusing on John's school and home life and how he deals with his father's absence and his homicidal ideations. That being said, I think the film works just fine as it is- really much better than it sounds on paper. IANASK has an organic feel in it's material that is hard to find and much sought after by many cinephiles, and that is the artistic vision of its creator. Not having seen any of O'Brien's other films I can't tell you if this elusive vision is that of the director or moreso of the source material, the novel by Dan Wells that it was based on; or, of course, a perfect marriage of the two. What I can tell you is that this film is not only fresh and interesting in way of the story but also the cinematography, shot beautifully on 16mm film, which gives the film a much more stately and artistic feel than this sort of material would have easily afforded shot digitally with the increasingly common voyeuristic hand-held style. All in all IANASK is a perfect example of modern film that still has heart, soul, and style; and as such it is a breath of fresh air in today's Hollywood climate.