A recent college graduate flees to Paris after a break-up, where his involvement with a prostitute begins to reveal a potentially dark recent past.
Simon Killer eschews easy answers and obvious characterisation and it's all the more impressive because of it.
Black-veined and dark-hearted, this is another persuasive character study from Campos.
Simon is both a figure of fascination and someone from whom you just want to recoil, which makes this a tough, provocative watch, but one that has a lasting impact.
Even the endgame, where Simon seems to have earned his epithet, is fluffed.
Producer Sean Durkin is part of the brain trust behind the critical hit Martha Marcy May Marlene, and Simon Killer shares that film's high points and pitfalls. It's just as beautiful and spooky, but it's also a bit dank, too studiously serious to maintain its thrills.
There is an angry undercurrent to Simon's sadness, a danger in the lies he tells, delusion in the image he projects. Thoughtful direction elevates the grimy subject matter and explicit sex.
With Martha Marcy May Marlene (Sean Durkin), Afterschool and this fascinating examination of masculinity and madness, Borderline Films (the team of Campos, Durkin and Josh Mond) have created a dark, dystopic trilogy about malcontent American youth. Kind of ironic, really, as this trio of filmmakers are among the brightest young talents on the American indie scene.
Aside from some brilliant flourishes, this is a fairly conventional tale of a myopic male sociopath.
In this lurid erotic thriller, a sad and extremely dislikable US graduate takes a journey to the end of the night in Paris, survives, and is ready to lie about the experience. Unpleasant, but not negligible.
General release. Check local listings for show times.