Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) Review

Tagline: He's not Freddy. He's not Jason. He's real.

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) Review

 

There are horror movies that are fun to be scared by, and then there are horror movies that are so scary you feel like you need therapy after. That might sound exaggerated, but there are a few out there that have reputations for being that scary, and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is one of them.

It opens with shots of Henry’s victims—fresh corpses, dead eyes staring at nothing—and cuts back and forth from shots like these to shots of Henry going about his day, shopping at the store, making small talk with strangers. With just those little moments of Henry talking, you would have no idea he was such a vicious villain. Usually, the killer in a horror movie is the antagonist, but what about when the killer is the protagonist? That’s what we have here. Henry lives with Otis, a sketchy dude he met in prison, and Otis’ sister Becky has come to stay with them, having left her abusive husband. One night Becky and Henry are sitting around the dinner table playing cards and she suddenly tells him about her abusive father who would rape her repeatedly as a teen, and then he tells her about how he killed his own mother who humiliated him. It turns out Otis takes after his father in all the wrong ways, and wants to do to Becky what their father used to do, but then Henry turns Otis on to the joys of murdering innocent people. He teaches Otis how to be a serial killer and avoid getting caught, but Otis might not be cut out for the lifestyle, and with Becky around, it’s not easy to keep such a big secret.

As someone who has been desensitized by having watched so many horror movies, I can say Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is the scariest thing I’ve watched in recent years. It reminded me of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in its gritty realism. There is a unique authenticity to what plays out on screen that really creates a sense of unease and explodes in moments of shocking violence. Not everything is realistic (there are a couple violent moments that look really fake) but the way it’s shot is the biggest contributing factor to the realism—never mind the fact that these characters were inspired by real serial killers.

It also reminded me of the 1960 film Peeping Tom in the way Henry and Otis use a video camera to record murders. The scene of them infiltrating a house and carrying out unspeakable acts on a family has multiple layers of scariness. First off, their actions seem real, they are quick and brutal, and it has a voyeuristic quality being shot on a handheld camcorder as they are doing it, then we the audience are seeing it play back on a fuzzy old television screen, making it look even more authentic, then it’s revealed we’ve been watching the tape along with Otis and Henry the whole time—and then, to top it off, Otis rewinds the tape because he wants to watch it again, and he goes frame by frame. It’s undeniably disturbing. I felt like I needed a shower afterward.

Michael Rooker plays Henry, who you would know as Merle on The Walking Dead and from any movie directed by James Gunn. He is eerily good in the role, and allegedly never broke character during the entire month-long shoot, both on and off-camera. Even though he’s such an awful character and you really can’t sympathize with him (or Otis), he still makes for a darkly compelling main character, though Becky really is the one character the audience can relate to the most. She doesn’t know about Henry’s nightly activities, so the tension builds as the story progresses, and the whole thing ends in a way that will leave a knot in your stomach as the credits roll.

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is a truly harrowing viewing experience. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone but the most seasoned horror movie veterans. As one myself, I found it particularly scary, for its uncompromising vision of a seriously depraved individual.