'Psycho Killer' Review: Andrew Kevin Walker's Return Falls Flat

The return of Seven screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker to serial-killer territory arrives with high expectations but lands as a misfire. Georgina Campbell plays a highway patrol officer, Jane, who witnesses her husband’s murder and sets out on an unauthorized, cross-country quest for vengeance against a masked killer billed as the Slasher or Psycho Killer (James Preston Rogers).

The film struggles to build atmosphere or sustained tension. Dialogue often feels stiff, several set pieces that should land as scares miss their mark, and the movie’s use of Satanic Panic imagery and a death-metal link comes across as blunt and superficial rather than revealing or surprising; a late third-act reveal feels arbitrary rather than earned.

Campbell remains a dependable presence, lending Jane the right determination, and Rogers’s hulking physicality makes for an imposing antagonist, even if his oddly modulated, apparently re-dubbed speaking voice proves distracting.

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