Freeway Killer (2009)
Directed by John Murlowski who has a few horror movies under his belt and written by David Birke who clearly has a fetish for writing serial killer movies having previously done ones on Gazy and Dahmer among others. It's clear that this duo has had experience in the horror genre in the past it's no surprise that they were able to put together something that was extremely interesting - if not overly scary, gory, or suspenseful. Had this not been based on a true story or told ahead of time that the main character was in prison there may have been a high amount of suspense for us to run with for anyone not knowing the story ahead of time. Even without any real 'fright' factor it still easily fits in the realm of horror and was a very captivating watch.
Freeway Killer tells the story of the serial killer William Bonin (Scott Leet) and the two apprentices that he trained: Vernon Butts (Dusty Sorg) and later on in the life Kyle (Cole Williams.) What absolutely works about this film is how Scott plays William. He is able to be both charismatic and absolutely ruthless and is able to visibly show that he seems to be restraining the madness at parts of the film if you know he is actually insane. If you know anything about the story it helps that Scott actually looks quite a bit like William will the makeup on and really can play up his performance. Scott is definitely an actor I would like to see more of in the horror genre and hopefully will be making a return to it in the near future.
As the story starts we are shown Bonin being questioned by a woman who wants to know if her son was one of Bonin's victims so that she might have closure if her life. She's been trying to treat him well to get an answer instead of suffering by not knowing before he is put to death as the state's first execution by lethal injection. We are then narrated the story through his eyes, not at the beginning but part way in where he feels it deserves to be told from. In the very first scene you see Bonin pickup two hitchhikers, though we quickly learn that one of them was a friend of his that he has taken under his wing as a co-serial killer.
We progress from here through murders when while looking for a victim he sees a young man, Kyle, being berated first by his boss followed by his girlfriend. Kyle is the perfect target for Bonin - a young man with low self esteem. When he finally gets Kyle alone though he sees that he has the potential to be a like him and quickly starts putting him on the track of being a serial killer.
Again, this isn’t a horror movie with a high amount of gore, suspense, or scares (aside from the fact that serial killers look for the most part like normal people.) It is though a well written, acted, and laid out movie and was quite enjoyable as both a documentary as well as just a look through the eyes of someone who is definitely wrong in the head.
