Washington Post by Ann Hornaday
A film that reduces everything and everyone in its well-worn path to a pretentious trope and, in its final Grand Guignol moments, high camp.
✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
United Kingdom, Sweden, Canada · 2010
1h 49m
Director Michael Winterbottom
Starring Casey Affleck, Kate Hudson, Jessica Alba, Ned Beatty
Genre Crime, Drama, Thriller
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Deputy Sheriff Lou Ford is a respectable man, admired by everyone in his small West Texas town. But what they don't know is that his steady job, devoted fiancee, and friendly demeanor belie a horrific secret: he is actually a sadistic killer.
Washington Post by Ann Hornaday
A film that reduces everything and everyone in its well-worn path to a pretentious trope and, in its final Grand Guignol moments, high camp.
Los Angeles Times by Betsy Sharkey
Little more than torture porn tricked out in art-house finery. That is the bigger crime here.
In the end, his deadliest weapon turns out to be other people’s trust, something with grimmer philosophical implications than all his acts of violence combined.
ReelViews by James Berardinelli
Looks great and has some raw, unsettling moments, but the overall impression is of a production that fails to achieve what it sets out to do.
New York Daily News by Joe Neumaier
Affleck is playing someone split down the middle, but we're stuck seeing only one side of him.
Austin Chronicle by Marjorie Baumgarten
The Killer Inside Me is hardly uninteresting, and you get the sense that everyone involved tried really hard to pull off this difficult adaptation. But it would be impossible to view The Killer Inside Me as anything but a vast miscalculation.
Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman
The Killer Inside Me may be the darkest film noir ever made.
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
The reader of a pulp crime thriller might be satisfied simply with the prurient descriptions, and certainly this film visualizes those and has as its victims Jessica Alba and Kate Hudson, who embody paperback covers, but the dominant presence in the film is Lou Ford, and there just doesn’t seem to be anybody at home.
Portland Oregonian by Shawn Levy
The Killer Inside Me isn’t for everyone, and even some people who think it’s their sort of thing might be offended. But it’s too well made to dismiss outright for its twisted cruelty. Maybe that’s a compliment, maybe not.
Philadelphia Inquirer by Steven Rea
The Killer Inside Me is tough, disturbing stuff: We're tagging along with a sociopath as he explains himself, reveals himself, works things out inside his head.
How do you know what you see is really the truth?
The only place that ever sees any activity in Nicolas's town is the hospital. There, all the boys from the village are forced to undergo strange medical trials that attempt to disrupt the phases of evolution.