An investigation that takes up familiar themes without developing them any further.
We’re in Baltimore celebrating the start of the new year. A sniper has decided to target party-goers having fun on the top floor of a building. And it is the massacre, 29 dead are to be mourned.
The police are dispatched to the crime scene, including Eleanor Falco (Shailene Woodley). FBI agent in charge of the investigation, Geoffrey Lamark (Ben Mendelsohn), quickly asks him to join his team. In fact, he has heard the woman’s theories about the serial killer and so wants to benefit from her perspective.
You will agree that the subject of serial killers is not new, nor are feature films depicting investigations by American authorities. This keeps Argentinian Damian Szifron’s To Catch A Killer within the most tried and tested standards of this type of film.
Co-produced by Shailene Woodley, the film never seems to manage to find a breath that could really captivate the cinephile. Admittedly the tension is there, as are the action scenes (the one with the massacre at the beginning is extremely well done), but the characters lack some body and their development – particularly Falco’s troubled past or the deep motives of the killer – seems to have been botched too be.
Filmed in Montreal, “To Catch a Killer” is at times reminiscent of classics like “The Silence of the Lambs” or “The Zodiac”, but without ever coming close to them.