Film Assessment: Gaskins: The Hitchhiker Killer

GASKINS: THE HITCHHIKER KILLER by Matt Boiselle

Directed by Chris Helton, written by JL Goddard & starring Taylor Stiles, Warren Levi Haney & Shena Verrett

 There’s one thing about these dirty, backwoods true-crime tales that makes for some significantly unsettling horror, and GASKINS: THE HITCHHIKER KILLER dives headfirst into the story of Donald “Pee Wee” Gaskins, considered one of South Carolina’s most infamous serial killers. Directed by Chris Helton and written by JL Goddard, the movie follows Gaskins from the Sixties   by way of the Eighties as his prison world begins to unravel and the implications of his previous lastly start catching up with him, and I’ll admit, I went into this one anticipating one thing fairly brutal—and it undoubtedly delivers a few of that.

 What I preferred most about GASKINS: THE HITCHHIKER KILLER is the environment. There’s a dirty, uncomfortable high quality to the film that matches the topic matter, and it doesn’t attempt to make Gaskins into some type of glamorous antihero. You’re watching a deeply disturbing story unfold, and there’s an actual sense of dread hanging over the entire thing. Taylor Stiles offers the film a powerful central efficiency, and Warren Levi Haney and Shena Verrett assist spherical out the solid. There are some genuinely nasty moments right here, however the film doesn’t rely solely on gore to get beneath your pores and skin. Lots of the uneasiness comes from realizing that you just’re watching a narrative impressed by a really actual and really disturbing chapter of American true crime. That mentioned, this isn’t going to utterly reinvent the serial-killer film.

 There are undoubtedly moments the place the pacing drags slightly, and among the materials appears like acquainted territory in the event you’ve watched your share of true-crime-inspired horror. However there’s sufficient right here to maintain issues shifting, and the story of Gaskins himself is disturbing sufficient that the film has some built-in weight behind it. What actually works is that feeling of watching all the things slowly shut in round him. The title may offer you an concept of the place issues are headed, however seeing his previous start catching up with him gives a fairly satisfying narrative arc. It’s not good, however I discovered myself getting extra invested because it went alongside. For those who’re into true crime, serial-killer motion pictures, gritty unbiased horror or these tales that make you wish to instantly begin digging into the real-life case afterward, GASKINS: THE HITCHHIKER KILLER is certainly price a glance. It’s darkish, nasty and uncomfortable in locations—and contemplating the topic matter, that’s in all probability precisely what it needs to be.