Joel is a 2018 crime horror film based on the story of New York’s most notorious serial killer, who murdered at least seventeen prostitutes in the late eighties and early nineties.
We have a strange and troubling public captivation with serial killers, their increasing celebrity-like presence in media, both in the news and in entertainment, often transforming them into larger-than-life figures that keep audiences wanting more. The worst of these monsters have become global sensations, dominating this bizarre underworld of macabre fascination for decades, names like Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Albert DeSalvo (the Boston Strangler), all the focus of feature films. Now comes John R. Hand‘s independent entry, Joel, based on the killing spree of Joel Rifkin, a surreal first-person account of the man’s descent into madness, a hypnotic if unconventional film that will surely divide its audience.
Beginning with Joel Rifkin‘s (Arnold Odo) arrest in 1993, the film travels backward in time to the origins of his spiral into violence, tracking his days in school where he felt neglected and abused by classmates, shunned into the shadows. He gets his first look at nudie films, ones with themes of sado-masochism that have him feeling strangely excited. A late night viewing of Alfred Hitchcock‘s Frenzy (1972) hooks him on strangulation, and once he loses his virginity by paying prostitutes in his car, he realizes he can’t control his compulsion. Thus begins a string of murders that see him dismember and mutilate bodies, hoping to hide their remains. As he slips further into his dark and deadly fantasies, the death toll rises and the police close in.
Hand, who wrote the screenplay, employs a kind of home video journal approach, the film told in flashback re-enacting Joel’s experiences as he narrates everything that’s happening. This has Joel blandly recounting his past in a low, monotone delivery, every detail spelled out as if he’s reading the ingredients of a generic brand box of rice cereal. Admittedly, it’s a little disconcerting as he explains how best to throttle a woman, remove her head, teeth, and limbs, and how to dump her without a single waver in his voice, utterly devoid of emotion. It doesn’t get much more left of center than that.
The film separates the narrative with title cards, labelling the victims and number in succession, counting up to his eventual capture, all the while, Joel droning on and on about who and where he took to dealing death. As compelling as the story is though, mostly because it’s based entirely on real events (clearly meticulously researched), there is little to keep it all that interesting. Hand’s deliberate, lethargic pacing, combined with Odo’s colorless voiceover, hold this back, the movie never really pulling us into Rifkin’s nightmare like it feels it should. While Hand is clearly trying to keep this killer more grounded than say the fictional Hannibal Lector, the lack of momentum in the story stunts its larger potential.
Weirdly, Odo’s on screen performance (his acting debut) is much more chilling, his creepy presence the best thing going for the film, though the cold, matter-of-fact portrayal of Rifkin’s murders ends up numbing rather than significant. I was reminded of Chris Gerolmo‘s superb 1995 biographical serial killer film Citizen X, about Soviet murderer Andrei Chikatilo, played brilliantly by Jeffrey DeMunn. Odo echoes a lot of this in his strong performance, but the film itself can’t give his commitment to the character any weight, which is too bad, because done differently, this might have been a noteworthy bit of acting. As it is, Joel, is a curious misfire that very well documents the trail of destruction of one of history’s most notorious serial killers, one that true crime enthusiasts may find has great value, however, as a dramatic work meant to offer a deeper examination of the man behind the murders, this may feel unsatisfying.
Joel is currently available on Vimeo On Demand.