Film review: I Am Not a Serial Killer is a disturbing, genre-bending indie movie

Directed and co-written by Billy O’Brien, this adaptation of Dan Wells’s 2009 novel stars Max Records as John Wayne Cleaver, a teenager obsessed by serial killers.

Christopher Lloyd and Max Records, right, in I Am Not a Serial Killer, directed and co-written by Billy O’Brien. Photo by Nick Ryan

I Am Not a Serial Killer

Director: Billy O’Brien

Starring: Max Records, Christopher Lloyd, Laura Fraser

Four stars

The last time Max Records was seen on screen in anything noteworthy, he was a young boy in Spike Jonze's 2009 adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are. As a troubled runaway in a land filled with strange creatures, it was one of those wonderful unfettered performances that untrained children can give.

Now, in his late teens, Records is back in I Am Not a Serial Killer, a disturbing, perplexing, genre-bending indie movie that perhaps indicates just where his tastes lie. Directed and co-written by Billy O'Brien, this adaptation of Dan Wells's 2009 novel stars Records as John Wayne Cleaver, a teenager obsessed by serial killers. His shrink tells him he demonstrates sociopathic tendencies – and with a name reminiscent of real-life psychopath John Wayne Gacy, it almost feels like a self-fulfilling prophecy waiting to happen. It does not help that his mother (Breaking Bad's Laura Fraser) runs a mortuary, and is reaping the benefits as a mysterious serial killer runs amok in their town.

So is young Cleaver the murderer who is boosting the profits of the family business? Well, that would be telling.

In the first act, O’Brien delivers a left-field take on the classic adolescent-angst drama, proving once again that school days were not necessarily the best of your life. When Cleaver faces off with a bully, for example, his chilling comeback speech will have all those who ever suffered in the playground cheering. Then gasping with fear.

Just about the only normal person to be found seems to be Mr Crowley (Back To the Future's Christopher Lloyd, in understated form here), Cleaver's elderly neighbour. To say much more would spoil things, but as the story unfolds, the film gets progressively weirder and more otherworldly. Think Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin mixed with Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko and you're part of the way there.

In an era when the US indie feels like an endangered species, this Irish/UK co-production, shot in Minnesota (recalling the Coen Brothers' blood-spattered Fargo), has originality and bags of cult appeal.

• I am Not a Serial Killer is now showing in cinemas

* James Mottram