Right Now, You Can Watch The 12 Finest Serial Killer Films On Hbo Max:
When HBO Max came out in May 2020, customers were expecting the huge library of high-quality TV shows that come with the HBO name. It had a movie library, but it came from a stronger source.
Warner Bros. Discovery is a big company that owns HBO. Its main streaming service has movies from decades ago from Warner Bros., Turner Classic Movies, Studio Ghibli, as well as more. In light of this, its recent change of name to Max makes sense.
Serial killer movies are a popular type of crime drama because they show the bad side of people and make us think about how someone can kill someone. In a world based on social Darwinism where dogs eat dogs, some people get the utmost pleasure from killing.
That means a lot of big fantasy series, such as Harry Potter as well as “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, as well as some DC shows from the wider world. From Norman Bates to Hannibal Lecter, famous and scary serial killers have been created for the big screen.
Max also knows a lot about independent and foreign directors such as Federico Fellini, Satyajit Ray, as well as John Cassavetes, as well as Hollywood classics from the Golden Age.
Citizen X:
The made-for-TV spy movie “Citizen X,” directed by Chris Gerolmo, takes viewers behind the political Iron Curtain into a tense world.
The movie is based on Robert Cullen’s book “The Killer Department.” It’s about a forensic expert named Viktor Burakov who is determined to catch a scary serial killer. But things get a little more difficult when government leaders get involved in the probe.
The movie tries to poke fun at bureaucracy and uses a noir setting to help create a sense of mystery around the Soviet government. If you want to see an unusual serial killer story, this is the movie you should see.
Elf:
Will Ferrell, who plays a clumsy man-child raised as an elf within the North Pole, gives this Christmas tale an uncontrollable sense of fun and spirit that makes it maybe the closest thing Hollywood has made to a holiday classic in the 21st century.
Buddy rides an ice floe south via the candy cane forest as well as the Lincoln Tunnel to get to New York. At the Empire State Building, he looks for his real dad and at a nearby department store, he makes big changes to the Christmas displays.
Man Bites Dog:
Even though there have been many movies about serial killers, not many of them have used a unique structure like the Belgian French-language original crime mockumentary “Man Bites Dog.”
The movie, which was directed through Rémy Belvaux, André Bonzel, as well as Benoit Poelvoorde, is about a film crew that is after a charming but selfish serial killer and keeping track of all the horrible things he does.
During this process, the team gets involved in killing and even ends up helping to do it. The movie has become a rare classic since it came out, and luckily, HBO Max has the strange gem on its lineup.
Winter’s Bone:
Jennifer Lawrence quickly became an A-list star within The Hunger Games two years later, but before that, she played a similar part in Debra Granik’s gripping coming-of-age drama regarding an Ozark teen who has to make adult choices for her younger brothers.
Now that her mother isn’t around and the family is spending time together, Ree goes out into the meth-addled farmland to find her possibly dead or living evil father.
Dressed To Kill:
The mystery film “Dressed to Kill” by Brian De Palma should be on the list, if only for Nancy Allen’s great performance as Liz Blake.
The main character sees the murder of housewife Kate Miller and tells the story. At first, the cops think she represents the killer, but she ends up getting in the way of the real killer.
Peter, Kate’s son, believes Liz, and the two of them work together to solve the puzzle and find out terrible truths. This movie is sure to fill up your popcorn bucket if you want to see a serial killer story as well as a tight action all in one.
Diner:
Barry Levinson, who wrote and directed this great first movie, used his memories of Baltimore to make a funny, sharply observed picture of young adulthood that is similar to “American Graffiti.”
Featuring a cast of future stars that’s almost like the start of the “Kevin Bacon game,” “Diner” follows a group of college-age losers who stop worrying about their unclear futures by messing around in Baltimore in 1959.
Even though the stakes aren’t very high, Janet Maslin wrote that “Diner” is “the kind of small, honest, entertaining film that should never go out of style, despite this age of sequels and extravaganzas.”
M:
Fritz Lang’s famous thriller “M” is about cops within a German city who are looking for someone who killed a child. As more crooks join the hunting party, the story loses all direction.
Following his great performance as Hans Beckert within the movie, Peter Lorre got the attention he deserved. This is one of the first famous whodunit mysteries that is based upon a series of murders.
Mistress America:
In “Mistress America,” Greta Gerwig makes the most of her truly silly comedic energy, which gives her a gravitational pull on screen. This is part of a successful collaboration between Noah Baumbach as well as Greta Gerwig that began with Baumbach’s “Greenberg” and “Frances Ha” and ended with Gerwig’s “Barbie.”
The college student who will be Gerwig’s stepsister attempts to get to know her before her parents’ wedding, but she isn’t ready to get caught up in a bunch of bad plans.
He said that even though “Mistress America” is a screwball comedy, it “revises as well as subverts this most buoyant of genres through a steady undertow of anxiety, dread, as well as anger.”
American Psycho:
The scary psychological thriller “American Psycho,” which was based upon Bret Easton Ellis’s controversial book of the same name, was directed by Mary Harron. Some of the biggest names in acting are in the group, like Christian Bale as well as Willem Dafoe.
In the meantime, the story looks at how consumerist society infects the human mind in a wide range of ways. At the heart of the dark story is Patrick Bateman, the crazy main character who lives a normal life while having scary dreams.
But at night, his dreams take over and tell him to kill helpless people for blood. This is the movie you’ve been waiting for if you want a first-person serial killer saga with a dark twist.
Running On Empty:
Sidney Lumet’s emotional, beautifully played tearjerker is partly based on the lives of Weather Underground rebels Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. It’s about an alternative family who are on the run from the FBI after Mom and Dad bomb a napalm research center.
Their son is almost an adult and is a Juilliard-level music genius. The family has to make the heartbreaking decision of whether to let him follow his dreams and possibly split up for good. “The actors are often so good that they’re able to be authentic and touching even when the material sounds strained,” Janet Maslin wrote.
No Country For Old Men:
“No Country for Old Men,” a movie directed and written by the great Joel as well as Ethan Coen, is a scary crime story set in a small-town Americana. The movie follows a hunter who gets two million dollars when a drug deal goes wrong. It plays out like a conventional tragedy.
He plans to save the money for later, yet in the meantime, fate steps in the form of the mystery scorer Anton Chigurh. It’s scary to see a killer psychopath staring closely at his prey, especially if he looks like he came straight out of a morality tale.
The makers use Cormac McCarthy’s 2005 book of the same name as a starting point to create a tense story of greed and death. This movie has a killer that will give you chills.
Scream:
Horror comedies are tricky because one part usually takes away from the other. But Wes Craven’s clever killer whodunit rewards horror fans who think they’ve seen everything while still scaring them to death.
When the teens in “Scream” talk to the masked killer on the phone, he plays movie knowledge games with them, but they know enough about the regulations of the genre to avoid dying as much as possible.
In the style of scream queens including Jamie Lee Curtis within “Halloween,” Neve Campbell acts the killer’s elusive target displaying a toughness that will help her in many films to come.
