Serial killers have been all the rage in 2019, heading into 2020. I thought perhaps I would sit down and watch a film about a serial killer. I settled on Fixation a film from 2018 that got a sequel. I dived in blind and was in for a world of surprises.
The film starts with a flashback of a boy playing with his mother's panties. She has a visitor, and puts him in the bathroom. She asks if he likes the panties and gives him more of her panties. Then goes about her sex date. The man dies during sex and Charles discovers his mother trying to fix the scene. In the present Charles is an IT professional that comes in late every night. His wife Kathren is worried he's cheating. Meanwhile a serial killer is haunting the area. Eventually, Kathren finds a pair of panties in the car.
Their daughter Samantha confronts Charles about being the killer. He doesn't deny it. Just tells her don't extort him. That's it. Samantha starts killing some girls in the neighborhood that weren't so much bullying her as they thought she was creepy. She would just stare at them from a distance then randomly jump in conversations. She was creepy. Eventually Katherine figures out Charles is the killer and turns him. Detective Marshall is tasked with confronting Charles, the two are best friends. Also, Katherine is the best friend of Detective Marshall's girlfriend Alexis.
Charles kills Detective Marshall when he presses him for answers. Then gifts Samantha with the phone while covered in blood. He goes out to hunt another victim while Katherine follows. She's caught by Detective Marshall's partner Detective Jones. They go back to her car, but now Detective Marshall's body is in the trunk along with a lot of evidence. Katherine is taken to jail for the murders. Charles watches from another vehicle. Alexis' head rises up as she finishes performing fellatio and asks is it done. Katherine cries out about being innocent in jail, because inept police won't look at the GPS on an officer's phone or do DNA testing on the panties let her know she's going down. Meanwhile, Samantha has gone to meet her real father. A man named Theodore Bundy who wears a menacing eye patch. The End.
I feel like they just filmed this with no care for cinematic presentation. There's odd scene choices. There's one where Katherine is having issues with her truck and Charles comes to help. They keep talking about all the smoke, but there's no smoke. They could have just said it wouldn't start, or payed $5 or $10 for some cheap smoke bombs. The camera's aren't stationary and scene transitions are extended b-roll film of the city of Atlanta. There's some scenes where there is no real transition it jumps to the next characters and scenes. There's no real horror to the scenes that are supposed to be scary. There's a lot of blurry shots where they tried focus on one person or object, but it didn't really work out. There are scenes with a lot of background noise that probably could have been cut out by recording audio and video separately.
All of the police officers are terrible actors. Every last one of them. Even the badges are terrible. The sign that shows its a police department are terrible. Detective Jones has a scar on her eye. It's terrible, this is supposed to be an old scar. But it still looks fresh and bright red. They gave us thirty seconds of backstory about this scar. Why include it?
The story is there. With a few tweaks it would be really good. The problem is in the execution. The execution is terrible. It isn't there at all. Samantha becomes a killer, but doesn't show any signs of being bothered. Charles is okay with it, and had openly just told her he's the killer when he asked and it's all fine. They keep leaning on this idea that the gene can be inherited. That makes sense for Charles since he witnessed his mother killing a person, or people and she may have tried to offer him sex. His mother did offer him panties for sure. The thing is, Samantha and Charles aren't related. He's her stepfather. That could have been cut from the story because it brought nothing to the story.
It's a comedy for all intents and purposes. There's no real drama to any of this, it isn't thrilling or frightful. If they leaned into some jokes it might have been passable. Charles is, well, he's a cornball brother. That can be used to set up some great jokes. An example would be a cult classic film called Serial Mom. The mother is a serial killer, and she's basically Martha Stewart which makes it hilarious because she does Martha Stewart things while being a serial killer on the side. Maybe instead of having Charles try to be some super threatening killer, make him a corny killer. Samantha is also a killer, she skips around while killing putting her finger prints on everything and it just looks silly when the police are complaining that there's no evidence.
I didn't care for the movie, but every movie isn't for everyone. I don't like Tyler Perry movies either, but people seem to love them. I'd actually go ahead and put this one above Tyler Perry films, only because Fixated gives us an original story and tries to go against the grain. Every movie can't be a masterpiece, but you can at least grab the camera and shoot a viral. There was an attempt made to do something original, and I can't knock that. Clearly, enough people liked it that they made a sequel called Fixation 2: Uprising. That
You can check out some of my fiction at 12 AM Fiction or follow my web serial Exsanguinate and of course hear me on the Powerbomb Jutsu podcast.
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