Movies don’t have to be hard. They don’t all have to have twists. Or real characters. Or substance. Sometimes all you need is a psycho killer, a solid heroine, and an incompetent police force. Do you wanna guess if Psycho Killer has those ingredients? Long time producer turned first time director Gavin Polone teams up with screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker (the two are connected by the Walker-scripted 8MM) for a downbeat slasher that, more or less, delivers on the promise of the film’s title.
James Preston Rogers is the titular psycho, dubbed the Satanic Slasher in the film. He’s a hulking figure, with a gas mask/leather bondage mask hybrid that is unlikely to join the pantheon of horror iconography, but it’s sufficiently creepy nonetheless. The Slasher is on a quest to get across the country, indiscriminately killing people with the casual ease of stopping for gas. One of those random killings is the husband of highway patrol officer Jane Archer (Georgina Campbell). Thus begins the cat and mouse game that drives the film.
Psycho Killer is bleak and dumb in equal measure, and I say that with a modest level of respect. This is not a movie of grand ambition or one that’s out to rewrite the genre. It’s a meat and potatoes exercise that has a killer, a final girl, and sets them on a collision course. As they say in one of the better cartoons my kids watch, bingo bango.
The movie is a lark, a diversion that delivers on the promise of its title and premise. What that’s worth in the long run is in the eye of the beholder. 2025 was an exceptional year for studio horror, and 2026 is off to a nice start with Primate and 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. Psycho Killer will not be lifting the batting average. Despite Georgina Campbell doing yeoman’s work to carry this thing and give it a semblance of levity, Psycho Killer gets sillier the longer it goes on and, at 90 minutes, it doesn’t go on long. This culminates with a slow-mo massacre during a lil’ orgy hosted by Malcolm McDowell.
I can’t, and won’t, say Psycho Killer is a good movie. I also won’t say Psycho Killer is a waste of time. If you like horror movies, it’s an entertaining enough diversion. It’s a movie that is dark as hell thematically and visually, but it doesn’t burrow under the skin in the way that the most unsettling horror does. Frankly, Psycho Killer covers the killer pretty well, but is lacking in the psycho department.
