Story Synopsis: An abstract retelling of the real-life crimes of the notorious serial killer who terrorised New York during the 1970s. David Berkowitz, a loner who happens to be mentally ill, gets sucked into a Satanic cult. Given a weapon & ordered to kill anyone he meets, David heads out, shooting various innocent victims. When finally caught, he claims to have been influenced by a demon that lived in his neighbour's dog. Given the name "Son of Sam" by the media, David then changes his story, revealing the involvement of the cult. Despite being Jewish, David opts to be exorcised of his demons by a Catholic priest.
Film Analysis: Son of Sam is another of the serial killer films made by noted genre director Ulli Lommel. Lommel started out doing art-house films in his native Germany before abandoning it & heading to the US. Since then, he has made various cheap genre films. since the millennium, he has been busy making a staggering number of cheap films based on serial killers.
Son of Sam, like all of Lommel's post-millennial works, has been given a somewhat bad reputation by most genre reviewers. Indeed, the film is nowhere even close to being watchable - the various Satanic worship depicted in the film will leave a bad taste in the viewer's mouth.
The film is an abstract retelling of the notorious "Son of Sam" case. During the mid-1970s, a series of seemingly random killings plagued New York. At first, the police were baffled by the nature of the murders. But after linking them by the weapon used (a .44 Magnum revolver) they called the killer the ".44 Calibre Killer". A letter was then found at the scene of one of the murders, giving police a vital break. The killer was then arrested & charged.
The main problem with a film like Son of Sam is that Lommel doesn't know how to make a cohesive story, instead using all the tricks he learned in his art-house career to carry the film along. We have sound effects & voiceovers, frayed editing & what has become Lommel's trademark, his infamous 'lather, rinse, repeat' method of storytelling (in which the same scenario is played over & over again with little variation). Not to mention that the film has very little in the way of replay value - the film has nothing that would interest the viewer enough to watch the film again. In what is a cardinal sin for a horror film, the murders are glossed over, with only the victims' poorly done corpses shown (which have such cheap makeup effects that would dismay even the slightest filmmaker).
The acting is, for the most part, execrable. Cast by Lommel due to his likeness to the real killer, Yogi joshi is a very poor actor. The rest of the cast are slightly better but still quite wooden, although Lommel himself shines as the priest sent to exorcise Joshi.
