A whiff of David Fincher's Seven lingers in the air, but this moody crime drama from director David Lipper is devoid of clever twists. The film, a retro 1990s-style thriller, features Josh Duhamel as a retiring police detective named Shaw, who is upstaged by Dylan Sprouse's blood-splattered murderer, AJ. AJ's unsettling high-pitched giggles and evil smirks are reminiscent of movie killers from that era.
The plot kicks off when a policeman announces a serial killer, with evidence showing that AJ has the blood of three different people on his clothing. However, if the victims were all killed at roughly the same time, that would technically make him a mass murderer. It's best not to get too hung up on nomenclature or to think too hard about anything here—like how one character can predict that an ordinary pen would be left behind as a convenient murder weapon.
Shaw must unravel clues left by AJ to find his own teenage son (Corbin Pitts), who is locked up in an underground lair with only hours left until he runs out of air. The film also features Til Schweiger as Shaw's mysteriously German commanding officer, adding to the B- and C-movie fodder feel of the 1990s and early 2000s.
Despite a strong whiff of Fincher's Seven, the script isn't tricksy enough to pull off any huge surprises. It calls back to another Fincher classic, Fight Club, but without that film's clever twists. Still, for all its cack-handedness, there is some effort here to grapple with issues around institutional and personal guilt, and the wrongs done to young people that might turn them into smirking, giggling serial killers—or mass murderers, depending on how you define the term.
