Murderman, Murderland

This week I'm looking at horror in England, Texas, and the Pacific Northwest (spoilers for Kill List ) . . .

From the Grave.

Three ideas from horror cinema's past.

◆ Kill List, dir. Ben Wheatley, 2011.

1. What we do in the shadows. Wheatley's intense second feature stands out for its tying together of two distinct genres. In doing so, Kill List foregrounds what the hit man thriller and folk horror have in common—conspiracy. The hit man (or woman) often finds himself working for shadowy, powerful figures with dark motives, people he may ultimately need to turn against. A shadowy hierarchy also sustains the pre-Christian cult, the devil worshippers, the supplicants of the old Gods. The insight here is that these two conspiracies might be one and the same.
2. Anti-Le Samouraï. Violence in the hit man thriller tends to be approached as business—cold, calculated precise. Think of Alain Delon's meticulous process in Le Samouraï. Kill List accomplishes its genre blend by rejecting this approach. The violence meted out by its tortured, war veteran protagonist is disturbing, out of control, and emotional. When the movie takes its folk horror turn, the violence retains this quality. Religious violence isn't business. It's emotional too.
3. Every(hit)man. Kill List also diverges from the hit man thriller in its everyman protagonist Jay. He’s not George Clooney’s Jack—impeccably attired in a gorgeous Italian location—in The American. His home in England is exceedingly normal, nothing special. He’s having financial problems and, relatedly, issues with his wife. His work is soul-crushing but he has to return to it. Once he does hit the road for work, life is all gray streetscapes and bland, oppressive business hotels. Jay lives a life burdened by capitalism, not liberated into a world of criminal glamour. 

Right Behind You.

A thought on horror's present.

◆ Man Finds Tape, dir. Paul Gandersman and Peter Hall, 2025.

4. A cinematic world. Straying into horror history's rich vein of metacinema (from Peeping Tom to Arrebato to New Nightmare), Man Finds Tape got me thinking less about its precise details and more about possibilities surrounding cursed or haunted footage. One aspect of the film's bizarre, layered mystery is video footage that not only captures moments where a whole town falls into a trance but that itself seems to put viewers into the same type of trance. The mystical phenomenon here doesn't come across as tied to an object—a particular film reel or a Ringu-style video tape of some occult origin. Video here is capturing (maybe channeling) a ubiquitous phenomenon. This is fitting in a film which is itself entirely reliant on the ubiquitousness of video today. Man Finds Tape is cobbled together from various kinds of “found” footage: from surveillance tapes, mobile phones, handheld cameras, video conferences, and tv broadcasts. Cinema can sometimes feel like it comes from another world—either from the rarefied, specialized sphere of the film industry or from the distinct, usually urban cultural milieu of artists and activists. But video production and distribution has permeated the culture. It's everywhere, all around us. We're immersed in it. If a mystical phenomenon is visible on video, in our video-flooded present, then the phenomenon feels like another part of our world. There are no longer neat borders between the cinematic and the real.

Living Deliciously.

A recommendation.

◆ Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers by Caroline Fraser, 2025.

5. At least the SuperSonics won a championship in 1979. I’m just a little over a third of the way through Caroline Fraser’s Murderland, but I’m quite confident in recommending it. True crime and horror interrelate in various ways, including in their mutual interest in the roots of violence and criminality—with the crime behind the crime. Murderland links the wave of serial killers (especially in the Pacific Northwest) in the 70s and 80s to environmental injustice—to the mental and bodily cost of growing up and living around toxic industry that pumped arsenic, copper, lead, and more into the air. Murderland’s interest in horrible murders and toxic pollution makes it a dark, dark book, but a gripping one too. And it offers a productive, wide-angle perspective on the roots of violence.  

Dead of Night publishes every Tuesday.

Last month, the vicious bigots in power moved to end gender-affirming care for youth across the United States. 19 states have joined a lawsuit seeking to block this policy. Our trans and immigrant neighbors remain the two communities under the most savage, daily attacks in this country. Fascism requires enemies, and these communities are first on the list. Now is the moment to organize.