Donald Brubaker Jr. (Griffin Cork) is the son of serial killer whose last words from his father were, “Good luck Junior”. Dad’s toll was 6.
Brubaker can’t shake the blackness of his past. It begins to overtake him causing him to sleepwalk at night waking up who knows where. It certainly can’t improve his mental health that he is an obituary writer. He obsesses if he is at heart like his father who chastised him as a child saying if you can’t kill you can’t be a man.
His marriage to Gwen (Elizabeth Chamberlain) has drifted over the last decade because of his unhealthy obsession.
A neighbourhood girl, Melanie Underwood, knocks on the door one evening and asks if he has seen her missing dog. Melanie disappears. In a sleepwalking dream he has strangled Melanie. The investigating police find Melanie’s body in a ravine behind Brubaker’s house. Then it is babysitter Charlene that disappears and once again a sleepwalking dream he slashes with a knife and hears a scream. Charlene’s body is found in a most incriminating location.
His self-imposed guilt augments with the discovery of a box full of “trophies” hidden in the furnace room. So dear viewer you are watching a film about the mind of a serial killer? Hauntingly clever but don’t we watch so many documentaries and films about Dahmer, Bundy, Manson, The Boston Strangler and Pickton?
Then the unimaginable blasts you out of your socks and while you are coping with that something even more unimaginable rocks you again. Brubaker’s rumination that the apple never falls far from the tree needs some adjusting. It fell a little farther than you want to believe.
Superb writing by JarvisG and for that matter the same goes for his directing. And what a soundtrack particularly the opening song “I Should Have Known” performed by Elizabeth Chamberlain.
All in all, an A List horror film saturated with intelligence and horror. And Gustav the Rabbit was wrongly blamed for the stench.
RKS 2024 Film Rating 94/100 for this Canadian film executive produced by Stanley A. Papulkas, Richard Baker and Todd Chamberlain.
One of the excellent films showing as part of The 4th Annual Greek International Festival Film Tour (Canada) playing in 11 Canadian cities 1-31October2024. You can find more about the Festival at https://gifft.ca
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