The “relentlessly dumb” serial killer thriller Roger Ebert detested: “The audience simply laughed”
As a general rule of thumb, serial killer thrillers are always good value for money when handled well. Dripping in atmosphere, packed with twists and turns, and featuring the occasional jaw-dropping burst of brutal violence, the genre has the potential to keep audiences on the edge of their seats. However, Roger Ebert wasn’t alone in finding one unfortunate example to be unintentionally hilarious.
Whether entirely fictional or inspired by real-life events, there are several boxes these movies are required to tick. There’s the drip-feeding of information to keep the viewer one step behind so the reveal of the culprit packs the hardest punch, at least one dogged detective tracking down clues, and a would-be victim who’s usually rescued from certain doom at the last possible second.
It’s familiar, but eminently watchable in the right hands. After all, there’s a reason why David Fincher’s Zodiac and Seven, Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, and Bong Joon-Ho’s Memories of Murder pack such a punch years, if not decades, after their respective releases.
However, it would be a stretch to call writer and director Bruce Robinson’s 1992 effort Jennifer 8 remotely memorable, not just because it bombed at the box office. On paper, Andy Garcia’s cop stumbling upon a severed hand and realising there’s a mass murderer targeting blind women has potential, but the execution was woefully lacking.
“Jennifer 8 promises a plot of excruciating complexity,” Ebert wrote in his 1.5-star review. “But the storyline turns relentlessly dumb. By the end, the characters might as well be wearing name tags: ‘Hi! I’m the serial killer! This is the kind of movie where everybody makes avoidable errors in order for the plot to wend its torturous way to an unsatisfactory conclusion.”
The critic’s summation of the script wasn’t exactly enthusiastic either: “Somebody should have taken a hard look at the screenplay and decided that it wasn’t finished.”
Uma Thurman plays the next character on the killer’s hit list, and while Ebert always found her to be a reliable presence onscreen, in this case, she earns unflattering comparisons to “a soggy zombie who occasionally musters a smile.”
As all serial killer thrillers crafted for the big screen are wont to do, there’s the obligatory third-act twist designed to leave jaws on the floor. It can be the make-or-break point for any film that can achieve one or two effects: generate a major talking point and rug-pull of epic proportions, or tank the whole narrative.
Considering that Ebert blasted the “red herring of truly startling proportions” as a cynical move that confirmed his suspicions that Jennifer 8 is “willing to cheat, lie, and defraud to get a cheap thrill,” Robinson didn’t pull it off. Not only that, but it’s not as if he was in the minority when his overriding memory of the twist was that “the audience simply laughed in disbelief.”
Needless to say, Jennifer 8 didn’t enter the pantheon of all-time murderous movies when it first landed in cinemas with a dull thud, and only the most ardent aficionado of the serial killer subgenre will even remember it exists.
