Serial killer films are becoming trite in this day and age. Between the myriad documentaries or strait to streaming releases, there are more pieces of serial killer media than there ever was serial killers. The reasons are pretty obvious even as they are ambiguous, provoking a macabre interest in those that would discard their humanity for a release that is incomprehensible to most people outside of the sexual explanation (and serial killers are often described with sex in mind). The problem is that for all of what is difficult to understand about serial killers, there really isn't much to say. We can step through their movements and see ambiguous markings as to what their intentions were, but it is something like trying to push two magnets of equal charge together. There's this invisible barrier, soft feeling but preventative. Getting a film about serial killers working requires an angle to really get right, something to put us in a new headspace to consider this from a different angle.
The Clovehitch Killer abandons looking for reason in the titular killer's motivations. It just is, the film says. Instead, what we have is a film about an unsuspecting victim of the killer's insatiable need. Clovehitch follows Tyler Burnside, a teenager in a small town in Kentucky with a rather quaint life. His family is very religious but not overbearing, he is a boy scout and his father is the troop leader and local handyman. He goes to school, attempts to date, and is perfectly quaint in just about every way. Tyler isn't necessarily the text book good kid, however, as an early scene points out. Tyler waits for his father to fall asleep, sneaks into his room to steal the car keys, and picks up a girl he has been seeing from church. They go park somewhere and start to make out, getting heavy enough that she asks to put down the seat. In reaching for the lever, she pulls out a picture cut out from a magazine. The image is a lot to handle for two christian kids from Kentucky. It shows a topless woman bound in rope with a leather mask and ballgag. The girl is disgusted and quickly spreads rumors around about Tyler's apparent fetish, but Tyler is adamant it isn't his, as the truck belongs to his dad.
There is no twist or mystery to Clovehitch, although I read some reviews that had implied there was. You know what is going on from the very beginning, that Tyler's father is the notorious Clovehitch killer. There is no tricking the audience with this one. First time director Duncan Skiles is more interested in what this knowledge does to a young person, and how they come to terms with it. Tyler's excavation of his father's past leads him to his father's regular and rather secretive haunts around the house, and into a friendship with resident weirdo Kassi who is obsessed with the murders that happened around town. The film could have played this as a two-kid detective story, but it doesn't. Rather, it follows Tyler's suspicion and denial about who his father really is, and that leads to some really stellar tension.
The trick with tension is that it is two points tugging the audience simultaneously: a point of either what the character is doing or what the audience wants them to do, and the eventual threat of them either getting caught or otherwise found out. With Clovehitch, that becomes even more complicated. Tyler's father is an incredibly normal, happy-go-lucky christian man. He's kind, he has sensible hobbies, he has a humbling job as a handyman. He's as unsuspecting as they get, but we the audience never doubt that it is him. Instead, the threat becomes what does this man look like when he is pressed into a corner? Tyler's continual search for more evidence his father is truly the killer is always played along a taught line of knowing that his father is, obviously, always nearby. After all it is his house, and naturally this being a small town if he ever leaves he most likely hasn't gone far. The possibility of Tyler getting caught is incredibly plausible, and not only that there is a tit-for-tat aspect to the dramatic play. Tyler's father doesn't let much get past him, but even when he becomes aware of his son perhaps getting into relatively sensitive areas of the house, he plays it off as something rather quaint which somehow feels even more intense than a direct confrontation. For a long time, you are not sure how much Tyler's father is aware of - kudos again to director Duncan Skiles - and nor are you totally sure exactly what Tyler is going to do with the information he wants so badly. It is the kind of tension that grips you by the stomach and clenches harder as the film goes on.
Or at least it does up to a point. There is no "off" part of the film where suddenly I stopped feeling anxious, but there were moments that made me all that more aware that I was watching a film. The Kassi character, in particular, was rather convenient and, though they showed restraint, had some obvious plot points ahead of her. Likewise, there is a part of the film that, without giving too much away, had two perspectives that played one after the other that made the second go around have lesser tension, enough to argue that it could have been cut entirely. There is a tightness missing from the script slightly, and there is a layer of realism that feels to only be half-awake, occasionally nodding off for plot convenience. But even with these small gripes, The Clovehitch Killer is one of the most suspenseful movies I've seen this year. It works subtly on your anxiety muscle, slowly unspooling what you know is to come until you can almost not take it anymore. Like many of these skillful, slowburn films from first time directors, there is a lot of promise and a little work that could lead to an interesting career for Duncan Skiles. To tell such on overdone story in a compelling way that not only retains the tension, but manages to increase it, is worth highlighting. The Clovehitch Killer is another film in a shortlist of small budget horror movies that has started to turn my love back to horror again, and for that I am thankful.
7.5
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