Psycho Killer (2026)
Psycho Killer | A Fine Time
Written by Noah Dietz: 5/1/2026
I won’t beat around the bush, I’m a sucker for a “guy in a mask” movie. I can’t wait to buckle in for the newest “guy who kills people” flick as long as it looks even slightly interesting. Trailers drenched in black and red with some seven-foot-tall guy holding an axe? That’s enough for me, I’m ready to pay money to see the movie. Regrettably, I did allow myself to get talked out of seeing this in the theater because, by many reports, the film was just bad. Some people were calling it the worst movie of the year, which really is a crazy line to drop on something that I feel is absolutely fine.
The main attraction to Psycho Killer is that, in the sea of franchise films and sequels this year, it is actually a standalone item. Our journey with our satanic killer is a relatively simple one, but I feel it still did at least a decent semblance of what it set out to do. There’s no obnoxious twists — this is a straightforward story that has nothing you won’t see coming — but it didn’t stop me from having a pretty solid time. All in all, the movie lives in a world of “this is fine,” having nothing offensively bad to put you off, but also nothing amazing to pull you in. Many of the performances are a little flat, the soundtrack is uninspired and generic, and there’s very little spirit in the camera at all.
That said, I still find it hard to call this a uniquely bad experience. The killer may have a pitch-shifted voice that makes you laugh out loud, but it’s still fun to watch him careen through a scene (abhorrently awful CG blood splatters aside). It’s a simple story, but it does deliver on enough of the promises that I can’t be that mad about it. Hey, in his five minutes of screentime, Malcolm McDowell even seems to be having some fun as cult leader Mr. Pendleton. Though it threatens it, I don’t feel we ever hit slog status while watching.
Written by Andrew Kevin Walker of Se7en fame, Psycho Killer follows our titular killer (James Preston Rogers) as he carves his way from the West Coast all the way to Middletown, Pennsylvania. While traveling through Kansas he’s pulled over by highway patrol, killing the officer in the process. Officer Archer (Georgina Campbell), the wife of the murdered patrolman, decides to take some personal time to try and help track the killer down. Over the course of the film, their cat and mouse chase takes them to the inevitable end of the line, with Officer Archer finally managing to bring the man down before he can enact his final plan.
As said before, it’s a very simple story, but it’s interesting enough to follow.There are a couple disjointed scenes on our cross-country romp, but it’s hard to pretend that any of them have any real weight to them at all. A kill or two that are cool, a needle drop of Venom’s song In League With Satan that makes no sense in its given setting, and a whole lot of phone calls make up the middle of the movie. Some of it works, and other elements highlight the inexperience of the hand behind the camera. But these flaws weren’t enough to ruin my good time. Aside from a frankly disappointing conspiratorial story beat at the end, I mostly enjoyed myself. I found the very final scene of the film, a moment that confirms a great deal of already annoying background chatter, to be a moment that threatened to drop the entire film in my estimation. I’ll admit, however, while I hated it, the emotions it raises do maintain the spiritual connection to the slashers of yore.
Unfortunately, a strong writer is not enough to outweigh an amateur director’s first outing. A career TV and film producer, director Gavin Polone doesn’t necessarily do a bad job. However, a more experienced hand would have been able to help this rise above the hopeful but mediocre film we ended up getting. Somebody who could have done something interesting with the camera shots, perhaps. Maybe even just another person to take a peek at the script to dress up what the killer gets up to. There’s one fun scene with the killer and a priest, but most of his rampage feels by the numbers. There’s only so many times you can see a crime scene with the same blood paintings on the wall, after all. That said, one thing I will readily say — and this is meant entirely as a compliment — is that this film has solidified itself as my newest baseline of tolerable quality. A perfect 5/10 in almost every element. Nobody here is rising above what you could expect from a straight to streaming thriller, but the bones of quality are here. Visible enough bones that it has — and will continue to — frustrate some viewers, but what we’ve been given worked enough for me. Not good, not bad, just old school schlock with modern equipment.
Film: Psycho Killer
Director: Gavin Polone
Writers: Andrew Kevin Walker
Release Year: 2026
Rating: 2.5/5
Psycho Killer harks back to many of the often middling, masked killers of the past while attempting to put forth the question, “Is it not enough to have a big guy in a mask kill people?” It’s not, but if you’re a slasher fan you shouldn’t let that stop you from seeing it anyway.