IN THE MIND OF A KILLER

Director Joe Charbanic and Keanu Reeves have worked together before. Charbanic made his name directing music videos for a whole range of bands, from Guns ‘n’ Roses solo artist Slash to Coolio, from Mary J Blige to Aaron Neville. Reeves saw his work and liked it so much that he tracked him down to direct a video for his own band, Dogstar.

So it seems fitting that, when Charbanic made his feature debut - an edgy psychological thriller called The Watcher - the film should have in it a major role for the actor (and part-time singer). But the role he plays is nothing like the Keanu Reeves of The Matrix or Speed. He is not an almost reluctant hero forced by circumstances to do something truly remarkable; he is David Allen Griffin, a serial killer with a particularly sadistic streak who sends details of his next victim to the FBI exactly 24 hours in advance of the killing, daring them to prevent it from happening. “The ticking-clock aspect gives the story an immediacy, a palpable tension,” says Charbanic. “It’s very scary.”

Nor does Griffin simply mail the information to the FBI in general. He is interested in only one agent: Jack Campbell (James Spader). The Watcher is not the kind of movie where a string of clues gradually lead us to the identity of the murderer: we know almost from the start who the killer is. “It’s the first time I can remember a film where we find out who the killer is so soon,” says producer Nile Niami. “It allowed us to establish the suspense in a completely different way.” It also, with echoes of such murder-hunt classics as The Boston Strangler and Silence of the Lambs, depends on the disturbingly close relationship that binds the two men together.

For one, it is a game; for the other, it is a job. But both are focused on the same thing more or less full time and, as a result, are closer to one another than they are to those around them. “The movie is not about revenge,” says screenwriter David Elliot. “The killer and the FBI agent actually give a kind of weird structure to each other’s lives.”

This, points out Charbanic, is an element of the story very much based in reality. What is more, the strain that this puts on the police ‘profiler’ on a murder case can often lead to his or her collapse.

“It’s very common for FBI agents to have mental breakdowns,” he says. “One of the real agents who was a consultant on the film had had three himself. They are highly professional on the job, but their personal lives are often a mess. By constantly having to get into the minds and methodologies of serial killers, their thought processes can become kind of warped, which takes its toll on their personal relationships. And they are always carrying such a heavy burden, knowing that, if they don’t catch the killer, someone else is going to die.”

David Allen Griffin began his homicidal career in Los Angeles, with lonely young women as his targets. More recently, however, he has moved on - to Chicago. And Campbell has gone along with him, determined to make good his previous failures. But by now, the FBI agent has become a vital part of Griffin’s game. Fully aware of just how plagued with guilt Campbell is about all the deaths he has been unable to prevent, he begins to goad him, sending photos of his future victims 24 hours before killing them, and gradually tightening the screws in what becomes more and more of a personal vendetta.