A Serial Killer’s Guide to Life is a 2020 comedy about a self-help addict who unwittingly finds herself in a jam with her new life coach.
Lou Farnt (Katie Brayben) can’t seem to find herself, living with her conventional, somewhat needy mum (Sarah Ball), haplessly trying to find the answers to life in a series of self-help books and recordings. Her current favorite is a life coach named Chuck Knoah (Ben Lloyd-Hughes), who sort of works the obvious, instructing followers to “visualize” themselves and the sort, leading Lou to bump into Val Stone (Poppy Roe) at one of his seminars. Val declares that Lou won’t learn anything this way and invites her to join her on a road trip to try something different, where Lou begins to see things a little differently. Until she discovers Val is also a rather successful serial killer.
It’s an amusing jab at the self-help industry, with writer and director Staten Cousins Roe having some fun with the killer-on-the-run genre, layering his small film in a thick gooey frosting of dark comedy. It works mostly because of the solid pairing of Brayben and Roe, sitting on polar ends of the personality spectrum, Brayben sinking into the mousy introvert with aplomb as Roe straddles the maniacal like she’s getting paid by how hard she can scowl. It’s pretty funny.
Likewise is a modest but often on point script that follows the two on a few familiar adventures that poke hearty fun at self-discovery guru camp types, from outdoor back-to-nature trips to “sound therapy” and more, Lou struggling to find deeper meaning while Val leaves a trail of bludgeoned bodies. And plenty of them. Of course, it’s all handled with tongue firmly in cheek, the therapy sessions over-the-top (though surely pulled right from reality) while the violence is underplayed in favor of laughs.
Of course, the hook is that the awakening Lou has is not the most enlightened as she finds herself swallowed up in the mayhem. Where it goes from there, I won’t divulge, but Roe has some smart corners to explore in carrying these women to the finale, and while the film might not tap into the full potential of its premise – the reveal at its close perhaps a wee bit transparent for those paying attention – there’s more than enough in the mix to keep this interesting.
What’s probably most appealing, beyond the two leads, is Roe’s attention detail and the purposeful containment of it all, the movie small and intimate. It hovers around Lou as she chips away at the weight holding her down, Val the hard edge that finds the cracks and exploits them. This isn’t a film with big splashy set-pieces of ultra-violence and gore, despite the opportunities, the burden more on the characters than the chaos in driving home its point. For the most part, that works, leaving A Killer’s Guide to Life a charmingly offbeat and quirky affair with a strong cast and a whp-smart story.