Indeed, no one in town-not the trusting sheriff (Tom Bowers), the know-all union man (Elias Koteas), nor anyone else-suspects Ford is capable of unspeakable acts of violence. Meanwhile, Ford keeps a respectable girlfriend in Amy (Kate Hudson), who doesn’t suspect her beau’s morbid desires. Her embrace of Ford’s darker passions unleashes a wealth of monstrous appetites and a self-destructive murdering streak. Tasked to run a prostitute named Joyce (Jessica Alba) out of town, he arrives at her doorstep and finds himself in the company of a woman who shares his aggressive tastes in the bedroom.

Set in West Texas in the 1950s, the film opens from the perspective of Lou Ford (Affleck), a soft-spoken and polite deputy sheriff who doesn’t bother carrying a gun, because his home town, the sleepy Central City, has such little crime. Although controversial and not for the timid, this unnerving, macabre tale of a psycho killer has its rewards for the right audience.

In same realm and tone of Mary Harron’s American Psycho, the often uncomfortable experience also happens to be an extremely well made and acted film, featuring one of the year’s best performances in star Casey Affleck. Michael Winterbottom’s The Killer Inside Me, an adaptation of author Jim Thompson’s eerie pulp novel from 1952, takes a fearless plunge into murderous material and remains unforgiving to the last moment.

The killer inside me book summary