What a stupid movie!

Released earlier this year, Cult Killer stars Alice Eve as Cassie Holt, a former librarian who is now a private investigator in Ireland.  Cassie has a tragic backstory, which we hear about from several people along with hearing about it from Cassie and then getting to see most of what we’ve already heard about in a series of flashbacks.  Cassie was sexually abused by her grandfather, dropped out of university, learned Brazilian ju-jitsu, became an alcoholic, went to AA, and is now a private investigator.

Her mentor is Mikael Tallini (Antonio Banderas, looking embarrassed).  When Mikael is murdered by a woman who pounces on him and then steps him to death, Cassie sets out to solve his murder and get revenge.  She discovers that her sleepy Irish village is actually the home of a cult of sex abusers and Jamie Douglas (Shelley Hening) has been killing everyone who either abused or betrayed her, though Mikael apparently was just killed because he had been hired to find out what she was doing.  Soon, Jamie is calling Cassie on the phone and telling her about all the details of her crimes, encouraging Cassie to help her while also acknowledging that Cassie will eventually have to arrest her or kill her or do something to avenge the death of her mentor at Jamie’s hands.  “We not do different, you and I,” Jamie says without a hint of irony.

Antonio Banderas gets top-billing in Cult Killer and he’s prominently featured on the film’s poster.  His character is killed off after the first ten minutes but he then reappears in flashbacks as Cassie remembers him training her and all the times that she told him about her tragic backstory.  There’s a lot of flashbacks in Cult Killer and they don’t exactly show up at the most logical of moments.  They’re rather randomly sprinkled throughout the film and often, there’s no real indication that we’ve entered flashback territory until Banderas shows up.  I know and understand that it’s currently totally melvin to tell a story in chronological order.  Everyone wants to be Christopher Nolan.  But the thing is, Christopher Nolan is a genius.  Most directors are not.  The director of Cult Killer is not.

Along with the jumbled timeline, the other big problem with this film is that Shelley Hening’s performance as Jamie is absolutely atrocious.  Some of it is the script, which forces all of its worst lines onto Jamie.  But, beyond that, Hening plays Jamie as being a somewhat mischevious brat while the film needs her to be a charismatic maniac.  Throwing a skull into a room and then calling Cassie to tell her that you just did some “Monster shit,” doesn’t make you into an intriguing anti-hero or a compelling villain.  It just makes you into the equivalent of a pre-teen tossing eggs at the house of a hated teacher and then bragging about it the next day.  Jamie’s relationship with Cassie never rings true and neither Eve nor Hening really seem to have much idea what’s going on with their characters either.  It takes a lot of effort to make two sex abuse survivors come across as being incredibly annoying but this film manages to do it.

The film features Jamie targeting the members of a cult of wealthy sex abusers.  That story had potential, especially when you consider that Epstein didn’t kill himself.  But the film gets so bogged down in flashbacks that it never creates a proper feeling of paranoia or, for that matter, any narrative momentum.  It all just feels rather pointless and confused, as if the film itself isn’t quite sure what it’s trying to say.  The best film to be inspired by the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein remains The Scary of Sixty-First.