Overkill review

By Simon Thompson

Writer/ Director George Kaplan’s Overkill is a perfect example of a movie with a decent (albeit pretty generic) premise, but terrible execution. Overkill is a movie with completely flat characterisation, and filled with enough technical issues to make James Nyugen blush.

The plot of Overkill follows Cassidy ( Alexis VanDyke, sadly no relation to Virgil Van Dijk), a true crime podcaster, whose life is rocked after finding out that her old college roommate Taylor (Carol Kim), has been brutally slain in her home. Cassidy decides to investigate this horrific murder, discovering that this case is the work of a serial killer – and before realising it, is now caught in the killer’s web. Joining Cassidy on the hunt is a disgraced police detective named Vega ( Brian Rich), who risks life and limb to bring the killer to justice.

Kaplan’s script is irritatingly pretentious and knowing. Overkill tries to present itself as both a good old-fashioned cheesy slasher/murder mystery on the one hand, but also a state-of-the-nation style think piece about the popularity of, and society’s fascination with, true crime podcasts and other related media.

In this blatant case of trying to have his cake, eat it, and then come back for seconds, Kaplan makes a series of trite observations about the true crime phenomenon and society’s relationship with violence that movies such as American Psycho, Peeping Tom, The Dead Pool, and Zodiac have all done in far more interesting and intelligent ways.

The presence of a Rod Serling-esque narrator who pops up now and again throughout the film, only further adds to this problem as it seems that the only purpose for his character is to signal how well-versed Kaplan is in horror history and basic parody.

The cinematography in this movie is poor, many of the shots are either blurry or suffer from extremely low visibility. This detracts from the impact of many of the kills or any of the other scenes in the movie which are meant to establish jeopardy or atmosphere because you can barely see them. Furthermore, the sound design, an ingredient that is key to any good horror movie, is shoddily mixed with the sound randomly cutting out only to reappear in scenes about 5-10 seconds later ,making the viewing experience feel like you’ve fallen asleep on the mute button of a TV remote.

The acting in Overkill is bland and emotionless, Alexis VanDyke’s performance as Cassidy has no spark to it with most of the scenes between her and either Brian Rich, or anybody else in the supporting cast, being exercises in monotony. Rich’s performance as Vega is just about passable but is still hampered by the deficiencies that are present within Kaplan’s script.

Overkill is now available on VOD platforms.