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"Morphs comfortably from teen fiction to a murder mystery to a cagey thriller, all with a wry sense of humor." – Twitch
Adapting the first in a series of novels by Dan Wells, filmmaker Billy O'Brien cunningly turns the familiar ordinariness of America's small-town heartland into a dangerous and wintry other world.
Shot on grainy 16mm stock, this is the story of John (Max Records, Where the Wild Things Are). While no stranger to death – having spent much of his time at a funeral home where his mother works – John's homicidal tendencies are anything but mere teen angst. He uses self-imposed rules to keep them at bay but when a real monster turns up in town, harvesting the organs of its victims, John's demons prove too strong to ignore.
Also starring Christopher Lloyd in an inspired performance as one of John's cantankerous neighbours, I Am Not a Serial Killer goes where no one suspects, even those who have read the book (although the film finale comes with Wells' approval).
"O'Brien doesn't just create an engrossing, perturbing, and oddly cheery character study. He proves that there is a way to cinematically adapt the new wave of literary horror ... breathtakingly innovative, delightfully ghoulish, and insightfully unconventional." – Austin Chronicle