Catch the Killer went under a bit in cinemas last year, but the serial killer thriller definitely deserves a chance. The cast around Shailene Woodley (Big Little Lies), Ben Mendelsohn (Rogue One), Jovan Adepo (3 Body Problem) and the future Galactus actor Ralph Ineson is already impressive.
On Prime Video: This is what awaits you in the thriller with Shailene Woodley
Shailene Woodley plays Eleanor Falco, a low-level figure in the Baltimore Police Department. She once dreamed of a career in the FBI. Now she works shifts as a patrol officer in the big city. There A sniper begins a series of seemingly random murders. Revelers on a New Year’s Eve night. Visitors in a shopping center. Nobody is safe.
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Shailene Woodley, Jovan Adepo and Ben Mendelsohn in Catch the Killer
Eleanor joins the investigation and gains the trust of FBI agent Geoffrey Lammark (Ben Mendelsohn), who leads the search for the perpetrator.
In Catch the Killer, familiar places turn into death traps
Serial killer films usually live from ornamentally decorated crime scenes, perfidious cat and mouse games with the investigators and the like. Every death is a clue, a piece of the puzzle in the overall work of art. Catch the Killer pushes the genre in a different direction. The Actions in the film are shocking because of their randomness and, if you will, listlessness. Human lives are extinguished like clay pigeons and even when the identity of the killer is eventually discovered, a feeling of gnawing emptiness and meaninglessness remains.
The film by director and co-author Damián Szifron (Wild Tales – Everyone Goes Crazy) is never cynical. The professional idealism of Mendelsohn and Woodley’s characters heats the film to a basic humanistic temperature. Neither the killer nor the hubris of the authorities, who put many obstacles in the way of the investigator duo, can suppress this. Catch the Killer, on the other hand, is most exciting when it happens turning familiar everyday places into death traps. And when the script follows the growing panic to its logical, bloody next step. Then the violence spreads through the city like a column of dominoes.
Catch the Killer is now streaming with a subscription to Amazon Prime Video. Alternatively, the thriller is available as a purchase or rental version from various providers.