It’s time for a film with a very intense title. I mean just seeing a film that is called Homicidal you are expecting something real intense right? Well the film definitely delivers on the intensity in terms of a crazy twist but is surprisingly not nearly as violent as I expected. That’s a very good thing of course but the film still has its own share of issues and I wouldn’t call it one of the top contenders.

The movie starts with Emily showing up to a rich hotel and asking the bellhop to come to her room. He does and she says she will pay him a ton of money to marry her for a few minutes. He agrees and drives with her to a late marriage shop but suddenly she whips out the knife and no diffs the marriage ceremony leader. She then escapes into the night and heads home where she takes care of an old lady who can unfortunately no longer walk or talk. So Emily basically just gloats and subtlety threatens her the whole time.

This sets the tone for what kind of character Emily is and then we’re introduced to the rest of the cast. First up is Miriam who is looking forward to her future as she has a boyfriend now and her flowers are doing well. She finds Miriam to be a bit standoffish but that’s fine. Miriam does get annoyed when Emily just randomly leaves the house for a day so Miriam has to watch over the old lady and then Emily even threatens to murder Miriam. So Miriam tells her guy and they confront Emily’s brother Warren who seems like he couldn’t care less. With diplomatic options not doing much good, what can the main characters do about this?

The problem in a sense is that the heroes can’t just leave so easily. For starters there is the old lady to consider and even if Emily is evil, Warren may just be getting suckered as the brother. So they need to try and convince him before it is too late but the longer this goes on, the more likely it is that somebody will end up dying. So is it time to call the police or something? Well that would be the smart thing to do…but the film has a really bad reason for why they don’t.

One guy runs for the phone but Miriam stops him and explains that Emily said she is married to Warren. The guy basically goes “Shoot, guess we can’t call the cops” and they completely change gears. The obvious question is…why? That shouldn’t matter at all. If they want to spare Warren’s feelings then I’m afraid their priorities are all out of whack. If Emily is someone who is dangerous and insane enough to threaten someone’s life then you need to get rid of her as soon as possible. Half measures and dancing around the issue won’t help at all. Miriam definitely fumbled the ball here.

If anything she looks pretty bad throughout and the ending doesn’t help her much either. Of course all of this is easier from the viewer’s chair where you see everything and understand the stakes but it felt like she never properly registered how crazy Emily was. At least by the time she threw out the threat you gotta leave town or arm yourself properly. It’s just a shame that nobody in the town could see how deranged she was considering just how she was barely even trying to hide it. She just kept on acting crazy.

Where the film goes a bit far is with including the old lady. I think this was really unnecessary as the whole thing is overly tragic. She literally can’t talk or yell out for help and is trapped with Emily for basically the whole film? It’s a little too edgy and is the only place where the film didn’t restrain itself enough. Cutting her out of the movie entirely would have been a lot better and you can easily write around that. Then you have the fact that the old lady tries to signal to the others and do other things to call out for help and none of it works.

Nahhh that’s just tragic. Ultimately the film may not be as disturbing and intense as it was trying to be but that was definitely something that was real intense just not in the best way. There are some scenes that I thought were a bit surreal/didn’t make a lot of sense but the final twist did address those. Nothing could address the moment about not calling the cops though, that’s just something you have to do.

Also with the opening scene it was weird how nobody tried to help the guy getting stabbed. Surely the bellhop could have grabbed the knife and restrained Emily after the first hit or two right? They just stood around while she kept on stabbing over and over again. That was way too much to be frozen with fear like that. He’s real lucky that she didn’t finish him off. I was completely expecting that but somehow he actually survived along with all of the money but definitely some degree of trauma. So he’s not 100% but that’s still way better than most of the characters’ fates here.

Overall, While I applaud the film in having some good restraint, it’s still not a particularly pleasant film. Any scene with the old lady is just not fun to watch. The characters make a lot of very illogical decisions and the whole thing should not have played out the way that it did. You could easily improve the quality with just a few changes but this is how it had to be. Hey, it does completely destroy Psycho though so I will give the film that. It actually beats the original film that this one was supposed to top. The twist is also really good. It’s a twist that makes a lot of sense in hindsight but doesn’t really occur to you as you’re watching. That’s the best kind of twist since it should absolutely make sense afterwards and the fact that you get to see in real time how most of the visual parts of the twist work is impressive.

Overall 3/10