Cult Killer

A serial killer thriller with a noir atmosphere

One of the last films I saw at the cinema was “Cult Killer” by Jon Keeyes with Antonio Banderas and Alice Eve.

This is a thriller characterised by dark noir atmospheres that shows the unlikely alliance between a female detective and a female serial killer who both have a history of abuse.

 

It’s really hard for me to tell you anything about the story without giving too much away. I myself went to the cinema after reading the short description, and I was sorry I did so because it took away the surprise relating to an event that happens right in the first part of the film.

 

Suffice it to say that its protagonist is Cassie Holt, played by Alice Eve (who you probably also remember from “Star Trek Into Darkness”), a private detective who runs, together with Mikeal Tallini, played by Banderas, an agency that sometimes collaborates with the police. Tallini saved her from alcoholism five years earlier and represents something of a father figure to her.

The film shows in parallel the investigations on the case of the serial killer and, through a series of flashbacks, the story of Cassie and Tallini, how they met, how their friendship and their working relationship developed, but also episodes of her past abuse, which had brought her to the brink of the abyss before she met the detective.

I really loved this choice, which allows us to discover little by little what happened in the past and consequently to better understand what is happening in the present.

 

It all takes place in an Ireland with evil and corrupt characters, devoid of any sense of morality and shame, proud of their wickedness, that a serial killer is slaughtering one after the other, to take revenge for the unspeakable evil that they have caused her.

In doing so, however, she accidentally kills an innocent.

And so, as mentioned, an unlikely alliance is born between a detective and a serial killer against the real villains of this story. However, it is an imperfect alliance as it is tainted by a probably unforgivable mistake.

This film contains elements that are very dear to me, including a clever use of flashbacks and the presence of main characters with a dark side, some of whom decide to embrace it while others manage to tame the monster that lives inside them.

If you like them too, I recommend you to see it at the cinema or watch it.