DVD Critics Corner - You Might Be A Serial Killer If...(11/26/05)

[TJL]

Serial killers in movies are very special people.

I’m not talking about the masked clods of the “Friday The 13th” or “Halloween” flicks, who merely walk up to you and lop your head off with a machete.
How cliché!

The ingeniously sadistic serial killers in movies like “Saw,” “Se7en” and “Bone Collector” will fix it so that the switch you turn on in the garage will cause the overhead light fixture to explode, raining shards of broken bulb on a nearby mousetrap which snaps and pulls a string that turns on an old victrola which plays a detailed message by the killer about your failings as a human being which is accompanied by an original piano piece he wrote specifically for you. You stand mesmerized by the music (because the killer somehow knows your never fulfilled desire to be a concert pianist) so you don’t notice the spinning record is attached to the winding mechanism of that old cuckoo clock on the wall, which opens precisely at midnight causing the nearby mannequin with the spring loaded arm to hurl a spinning machete at you, slicing your head from your body where it lands in a velvet lined hat box you were carrying the whole time!
Okay, you’re decapitated, but you have to admit, that was freakin’ sweet!!

So when some genius nutjob wants to dice you up and put your organs on display in a giant diorama in his basement, who you gonna call?

Mind Hunters!

The Mind Hunters in “Mind Hunters” are an elite group of FBI agents who use the power of observation along with forensic evidence to delve into the mindset of a serial killer.
Oh sure, you may think you’re a Mind Hunter when you presume that something might be wrong with your girlfriend even though she just assured you in a stern tone that “Nothing’s wrong.” One of the hotshot Mind Hunters in the movie would probably deduce that by the pitch of your girlfriend's voice, the color of her nail polish and the way she tilts her head, she is really saying “I wish you had a better job and I hate all of your friends except for Jeff because I have sex with him in your bed.”

B-List Brando and stripper molester Christian Slater leads the no-star cast of brave wannabe agents as they learn the ropes of serial killer catching from eccentric jerkass FBI agent Jake Harris, played by eccentric jerkass Val Kilmer. Val advises his dimwit charges that there is no greater weapon than the human mind when hunting for serial killers, provided your mind is full of important stuff like cohesive thought and logic, or else you might as well just sit quietly and wait for the serial killer to whack you so he can paint a indecipherable numerical code on the walls with your blood.
The band of young attractive Mind Hunters are flown to a training facility on a remote island for their final test so they can graduate Mind Hunter school and seek high paying jobs in the lucrative Mind Hunting community, get married, settle down and have adorable Mind Hunting children.
The hunt on the island for a pretend serial killer gets off to a shaky start when the agents start dying at the hands of a real serial killer with enough free time to set up several complex traps that involve tumbling dominoes, harpoon guns and acid laced cigarettes that do a little bit more than take you to flavor country.
As the body count rises, the Mind Hunters pool their gray matter and deduce that since they are the only ones there, and all the cats that for some reason inhabit the island lack the opposable thumbs to set up dominoes, that one of them must be the killer!
Is it the gittery guy in the wheel chair? Is it the pretty blonde with doubts? Is it special guest black guy LL Cool J?
I’m not going to give away the ending, but needless to say the killer does reveal himself, and in true bad guy fashion tells his last victim every detail about his plot, plus some exposition about why he did it, and how much he would love to do it again, which makes you think that the FBI should put some sort of “Check this box if you are a serial killer” thing on their Mind Hunter application. A strict "No psychotic killers" policy would probably work too.

I have to admit, that I have from time to time followed the career of Christian Slater. Okay, for a while I had a “Gleaming The Cube” poster on my wall but I wouldn’t say I was obsessed. I mean, lots of people can recite the complete dialogue from “Cuffs,” right? But it’s just a little secret that no one would ever figure out, would they? It’s not like there are some people out there who can figure out what I’m thinking just because I rented this movie at the video store, right?

Damn you, Mind Hunters!!!