You Might Be the Killer

Inspired by a Twitter conversation (!), You Might Be the Killer follows affable camp counselor Sam (Fran Kranz) as he finds himself surrounded by murder victims – with the narrative detailing Sam’s ongoing efforts at figuring out just what’s going on and whether or not he is, in fact, the killer. It’s a fun premise that’s employed to initially entertaining yet increasingly tiresome effect by director Brett Simmons, as the movie, in its early stages, effectively exploits the tongue-in-cheek nature of the setup with plenty of self-referential asides and a strong lead performance by Kranz – with the engaging atmosphere heightened by an appreciative dose of violence and gore. There’s little doubt, though, that You Might Be the Killer slowly-but-surely wears out its welcome, as scripters Covis Berzoyne, Thomas P. Vitale, and Simmons, perhaps inevitably, deliver a progressively repetitive midsection that highlights the decidedly one-note bent of the movie’s storyline – with much of the picture’s second half devoted to endless scenes of Kranz’s character attempting to figure a way out of his perilous situation. And although some of this stuff is admittedly pretty clever – the whole horror-spin-on-The–Mask thing is pretty irresistible, admittedly – You Might Be the Killer peters out long before it reaches its less-than-memorable closing stretch. The end result is an endeavor that could only have worked as an installment within a horror-themed anthology, as there’s simply not enough material here to sustain a full-length running time.

*1/2 out of ****