Shared Darkness

Written by Tom Malloy (who also co-stars in the film), The Alphabet Killer is a decently gripping psychological thriller loosely based on the still-unsolved “double initial” murders that shocked the citizens of Rochester, New York in the early 1970s. The details of the true story? From 1970 to 1973, three girls in and around Rochester were brutally raped and strangled, their bodies dumped in neighboring villages that bore the same first initial as their names. All three victims’ — young girls, aged 10 to 12 — first and last names also had matching initials. Despite the questioning of more than 800 suspects and the combined police resources of several communities, the case remains unsolved to this day.



In the film, Eliza Dushku stars Megan Paige, a police investigator whose commitment to the job borders on obsession. Megan and her partner, Lt. Ken Shine (Cary Elwes), are assigned to investigate the murder of a young girl named Carla Castillo, whose body is found in the nearby town of Churchville. Despite Megan’s considerable efforts, her inability to catch the killer leads to a nervous breakdown, eventually causing her to lose her fiancée, her career in law enforcement career, and her grip on reality.

Two years later, Megan is back at the police department, albeit in a demoted position. With the help of a mental illness support group headed by Richard Ledge (Timothy Hutton), Megan is slowly getting her life back on track. But when two more young girls are murdered with the same “alphabet” modus operandi, Megan becomes convinced the same serial killer has resurfaced. Battling hallucinations of the dead girls — as well as distrust from her colleagues — Megan dives back into the case, determined to bring the culprit to justice. With few leads and fewer concrete suspects, can she catch the “Alphabet Killer” before another victim is found?

There are hints of Flesh and Bone to this thriller, believe it or not, as well as some unreliable narrator/Insomnia-type shiftiness that Malloy craftily works in. (In this regard, the movie earns its stripes as part of a perfectly nutty Dushku double-dip, alongside the recent Nobel Son.) Director Rob Schmidt, who previously worked with Dushku on the thriller Wrong Turn, shoots the affair in a fairly straightforward fashion, but also has a nice sense of when to slow-play things to string along the tension. Dushku, who’s set to return to the small screen next month in the upcoming Fox series Dollhouse, does a fairly decent job overall, but also leans on a few mannered, TV acting tics that help keep her performance from being more of a naturalistic, rooted thing. If there’s a codifying strength here, other than the creepy fact that this is a speculative thriller, rooted in fact, it’s the movie’s superb supporting cast — the aforementioned bit players, plus Tom Noonan, recent Oscar nominee Melissa Leo, Larry Hankin, Bill Moseley, Jack McGee and Michael Ironside. They help give the film a sense of depth, and genuineness, that eludes a lot of straight-to-video crime dramas.

Housed in a regular plastic Amray case in turn stored in a cardboard slipcover with matching art, The Alphabet Killer is presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a Dolby digital 5.1 audio track. Two audio commentaries highlight the DVD’s special features. The first is with producer Isen Robbins and director Schmidt (Crime + Punishment in Suburbia, the “Masters of Horror” series hour-long flick Right to Die), the latter of whom talks some about his cameo in the film as a cop who discovers a body in a rock quarry. Also, somewhat uncomfortably and hilariously, Schmidt picks the exact moment of Dushku’s brief topless scene to say “It felt like the right time for her to play a woman.” The audio commentary track with writer-producer-actor Malloy is thankfully much more interesting and engaging. In breathless fashion, Malloy drops mad anecdotes and mundane details alike (Elwes wearing his BlueTooth in a scene), as well as pointing out his mother’s filing secretary cameo. In more substantive monologues, he expounds upon the themes of “man versus self” (or woman, really) in the movie; he also drops an amusing sideways crack on Ralph Fiennes when he touts co-star Noonan’s work in Manhunter.

Finally, wrapping up the slate of bonus material is a three-minute, time-coded, alternate version of the movie’s opening scene — an investigatory traipse through the woods by Dushku and Elwes — and a completely pointless six-minute featurette that strings together a bunch of behind-the-scenes footage under music. Some of the latter material looks interesting on the surface, but without some context or linking interviews, however, this tells us nothing of substance about the movie. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B- (Movie) C+ (Disc)