Review

  • This Jean Smart vehicle isn't half bad as representing real life FBI profiler Cancide Delong. Although this is clearly a made for tv movie, as a serial killer movie it makes the cut.

    From the throwaway title ("Killer Instinct"), to the cookie cutter serial killer (how many of those are board enough with their usual prey to start hunting down FBI agents?), this movie is only just believable.

    The problem is that I like Jean Smart, and this movie makes a nice counterpart to her portrayal of Aileen Wuornos (long before Charlize Theron got around to it) in the tv movie "Overkill: The Aileen Wuornos Story".

    Not great, but not bad either and in the tradition of other made for tv serial killer movies, like "To Catch A Killer" with Brian Dennehy as John Wayne Gacy, "The Deliberate Stranger" with Mark Harmon as Ted Bundy, "Citizen X" with Jeffrey Demunn as Andrei Chikatilo or perhaps even more ex-police officer Ann Rule's "The Stranger Beside Me" starring Barbara Hershey.

    Low on budget and production values, ok acting, but with a story at the heart of it that bleeds red.