Critic Reviews

Keating’s no-rules narrative, and amped-up, super-stylized visuals are intoxicating and disturbing, as each killer gets their own captivating moment in the spotlight.

While the whole thing meanders with no destination, I’m going to hold my position in the middle because it looks fantastic. If nothing else this exercise in nihilism has given Keating an excuse to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks.

Psychopaths is too random, too kitschy — too immature.

Keating fails to effectively transmit his love of pushing the horror genre to new heights, with the result that we feel less gleefully complicit than merely voyeuristic. This is a case in which less would definitely have been more.

Though the film acknowledges its performative nastiness at every opportunity—setting its killers and victims in windows, mind ballets, stages, and jail door slits, having them directly address the camera—acknowledgement doesn’t mean subversion, satisfaction or novelty. Even the most dedicated gorehounds should look elsewhere.

Devoid of characters or a story about which one might care, Psychopaths proves to be a fright-free pastiche without purpose — save, that is, for unimaginatively paying homage to a string of superior genre predecessors.

The director called this “mayhem porn,” a designation and ideology fitting for the latest from indie director Mickey Keating, Psychopaths. This is an active, obnoxious test of an audience’s appetite for blood and how long they can go without novel ideas like purpose or plot.