The 2010 film, Freeway Killer, opens with a desperate woman named Ruth (Debbon Ayer) visiting a man named William Bonin (Scott Anthony Leef).

Bonin, who has a quick smile and a mustache that makes him look like a wannabe porn star, is an inmate on California’s Death Row.  In just a few days, Bonin is scheduled to be the first man to be executed by lethal injection in the state of  California.  Ruth explains that she has done everything that she can to try to save Bonin’s life.  She has written to the review board.  She had written to the governor.  She has asked that Bonin be spared and she’s even used the exact words that Bonin suggested that she use in her letters.  However, she’s gotten no response.  Still, she now wants Bonin to uphold his side of the bargain.  She wants to know if her son was among the thirty-six men that Bonin is suspected of having murdered.

William Bonin merely smirks and points out that he never actually agreed to tell Ruth anything.  He suggested that Ruth write the letters but never did he say that he would actually do anything in return.  That was just something that he allowed Ruth to assume.  Even while sitting on Death Row and facing an inevitable execution, Bonin enjoys the power that he gets from manipulating people.  Instead of telling Ruth about her son, he tells the story of his life as a serial killer.

The film flashes back to 1980, when William Bonin has already started his career as a murderer.  A Vietnam vet who has a war story for every occasion, he cruises the freeways of California and picks up young hitchhikers.  Sometimes, he is accompanied by an accomplice.  Vernon Butts (Dusty Sorg) is a self-styled occultist who wears a wizard hat at home and who knows more about Dungeons and Dragons than real life.  When they’re not killing hitchhikers, Bonin and Vernon tend to bicker.  Vernon constantly points out that Bonin was not the great war hero that he claims to have been.  Bonin makes fun of Vernon’s hobbies.  At times, they seem to genuinely despise each other but one of the few times that Bonin shows any emotion is when Vernon tries to kill himself in a pique of hurt feelings.

One night, Bonin sees a teenager named Kyle (Cole Williams) being yelled at by both his boss and his girlfriend.  As he does with all of his victims, Bonin pulls up in his van and asks Kyle if he wants a ride.  However, when Kyle gets in the van, it turns out that Bonin doesn’t want to kill him.  Instead, he sees Kyle as a kindred spirit and soon, he’s recruited Kyle as his second accomplice.  Unlike Vernon, Kyle believes all of Bonin’s stories.  However, Kyle grows more confident with each murder and soon, he’s even suggesting that Bonin should kill Vernon.  Frustrated with both Kyle and Vern, Bonin search for a third accomplice, an act that ultimately leads to his downfall.

Watching Bonin, Vern, and Kyle, I was reminded of a creepy group of older men who always seemed to be hanging out on campus when I was in college.  Though none of them were enrolled in classes and all of them were notably older than the majority of the people on campus, they still spent all of their time hanging out around the student union, smoking cigarettes, and trying to impress people who were half their age.  They approached me and my friend a few times, making awkward comments about whatever we happened to be talking about or studying at the moment.  One thing that I quickly learned was that being rude would not get rid of them.  Instead, you had to literally stand up and walk somewhere else to get away from them.  (They had no problem approaching people but were too lazy to follow after them.)  At the time, my friends and I used to joke that they were probably serial killers.  Most realistically, they were probably just three losers who didn’t want to have to grow up.  Still, they definitely gave off a bad vibe.

Based on a true story, Freeway Killer focuses on the relationship between Bonin, Vernon, and Kyle.  Though he’s their self-declared leader, Bonin is incapable of doing anything without the help of Vernon and Kyle.  At the same time, the film leaves us to wonder if Vernon and Kyle would have become killers if they hadn’t fallen under William Bonin’s influence.  One gets the feeling that if Bonin and Vernon had never met each other, they both would have spent the rest of their lives as obscure losers, living alone and working a dead-end job.  Certainly, if Bonin and Vernon had never met, Bonin would never have subsequently felt the need to recruit Kyle into their activities.  But, because they did meet, at least 30 innocent people were murdered in California.  The film is unsettling, not just because of the murders (of which only a few are discreetly portrayed) but because of the feeling that the murders themselves would never have happened if only William Bonin had not served an earlier prison sentence at the same time as Vernon Butts.

Scott Anthony Leet gives a good performance as William Bonin, playing him as man whose quick smile is just a cover for the raging feelings of inadequacy that are churning just below the surface.  Dusty Sorg and Cole WIlliams are also well-cast as, respectively, Vernon and Kyle.  Sorg, especially, makes Vernon into a monster who is frightening because it’s very easy to imagine running into him (or someone like him) in everyday life.  Michael Rooker brings his quiet intensity to a small role as the detective who investigates the Freeway Killer murders.

The real-life William Bonin was executed in 1996.  I’m against the death penalty because I don’t think we should normalize the idea of the government killing anyone but that still doesn’t mean that the world isn’t better off without William Bonin in it.