Serial killers, at least in movies, used to be objects of disquieting awe. Tony Curtis' tormented sex murderer in "The Boston strangler" the sado-snuff fetishists of "Manhunter" and "The silence of the lambs", Kevin Spacey's cat and mouse psycho in "Seven" - in each case we were asked to crawl inside the sick cave of a killer's mind and to view his most unspeakable kinks as a nightmare reflection of "ordinary" passion. But no, though even these artful thrillers have spawned their own cliches. When Ashley Judd, the heroine of "Kiss the girls" gets dragged to an underground dungeon, where she locked up along with a dozen other damsels, the setting is as ripely corn as any fogbound horror movie trope of the '30s and so is the homicidal phantom's "creepy" operatic spiel about his desire for perfect love. Judd is able to escape at which point she joins forces with forensic investigator Morgan Freeman. "Kiss the girls" is a fake psychological thriller that turns into a garishly schlocky and implausible bogeyman hunt. Why, for instance can't the FBI locate the dungeon from which Judd has escaped? Because in their meticulous search of the forest, the agents somehow failed to find... those big wooden basement doors to hell.
Review of Kiss the Girls
