Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986)

(In French, On TV, February 2020) Some movies are gritty, but Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is grimy. Shot with an ultra-low budget, it certainly looks like it, with terrible cinematography, a handful of actors, and a sordid subject matter overcompensating for a multitude of other issues. Michael Rooker shows up at the titular Henry, who—as announced—spends the movie killing people. If you squint, you may pretend that this is a character study — but really, it’s not much more than an exploitation film with an appetite for gore. I’ll give it something, though: the atmosphere of the movie, being this close to cinema-verité, can often be unnerving. Henry is painted as such an irremediable monster that everyone in the film can be (and becomes) a target. It doesn’t make for a pleasant viewing experience, but it’s more effective than most of the horror movies out there that play safely with familiar genre elements. I still don’t like Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and would gladly never see it again, but it gets quite a bit of mileage out of limited means—for better or for worse.