How to Be a Serial Killer (2008) Review

How to Be a Serial Killer (2008): Reviewed by Stuart Conover

While not the first movie to do so- How to Be a Serial Killer, directed and written by Luke Ricci, takes another look at a horror documentary styled film. Playing off the concept that what you are seeing is made to be viewed by an actual audience as if it were real and not just a movie. The slight twist on this concept that’s run with throughout the film though is that it is stylized to be a late night Infomercial. They appear to be trying to sell you on both the lifestyle and buying a video or training course on how to be a serial killer AND why it’s good for you. If you have ever seen the movie “Thank You For Smoking” and appreciated it, this should provide you the same kind of humor.

The tale begins by showing a regular video rental store clerk named Bart (Matthew Gray Gubler) who is dealing with a customer that is nothing short but an asshole towards him. While this is going we pan over to see Mike (Dameon Clarke) who is watching this interaction and quickly cut to his infomercial showing off that learning to be a serial killer can bring you to new heights of self esteem, greatness, and attempts to show you that everyone is doing it. While Mike watches the interaction between Bart and the customer unfold he quickly swoops in for the kill. At first it is figuratively as he sells Bart on the idea of being able to take a life into his own hand and soon it is demonstrated as literally as he kills the customer. From this point on it quickly develops into a friendship that is based on Mike’s outgoing dominant personality convincing Bart’s submissive personality to follow his lead.

This friendship lasts through the film as Mike teaches Bart how to live as he does. The teaching becomes an obsession for Mike that starts to hamper the facade of normality that he has developed from his girlfriend to his job. The walls he has put in place to hide the monster that he is start to slip as he appears to grow more open and less careful with his killing. The entire time he becomes more obsessed with his own darker side he is trying to turn Bart into being exactly what he is. He finally has someone he can be open with and it pleases him to no end.

The entire film jumps between the dark humor of Mike’s infomercial and the reality of what he is actually doing. It quickly shows though that he lives by a code of rules to both keep himself safe and ‘moral’ in who he kills. Yes any fan of the show Dexter will quickly be making a comparison of using the idea of a serial killer with a code for both keeping himself safe and moral, even so with the commercial feel it plays out with some originality to it. This movie unfortunately suffers from coming out when Dexter is so popular as to easily overshadow the original concepts that it has.

The infomercial shots are what end up embodying how Mike feels his actions should be carried out, even when the rules don’t agree with he is preaching to Bart. While he shows off all of the ways in his rules that you can kill someone, and in action actually kills people in a multitude of ways, he tells Bart that if he wants to stand out he needs a signature. It is the signature that will let him leave a mark ont he world and Mike does not have a signature he follows through with in every kill. There is no underlying method to his madness.

The overall verdict? How to Be a Serial Killer is a mix of seriousness and fun. At parts of the movie it can’t seem to decide which way to lean which causes the pacing to be slightly off. For the most part though it’s a fun watch if your looking for an entertaining satire of a serial killer mover or documentary. With it’s infomercial styled pitch it is hard pressed to call this one a true mockumentary but that is the closest description that can be made. It’s a fun watch, worth a rent at the very least.