To complete her thesis, Ally Henderson (Ann Sheehan) has asked for an
internship with Dr Odd (Stewart Ogilvie), a psychiatrist who treats the
criminally insane at an asylum, and who's actually quite impressed by her
approach to the subject matter. The first patient Dr Odd invites Ally to
see is one Gordon Finn (Willy Adkins), a serialkiller who has started his
"career" by killing his mother (Ruby Gonzalez) back when he was
a teen. This will actually be the doctor's last interview with Finn
though, as the courts have ruled him sane after all and will move him to
death row in a couple of days. When Finn tells the doctor and Ally about
his last kill, Tess Aubrey (Lillian Lamour), Ally starts to react rather
weirdly, and it doesn't take Finn long to figure our Tess was Ally's half
sister - which only causes him to tease her in a crueler and crueler way
... until she picks up a pen and rams it into his neck repeatedly - Finn,
wearing a straight jacket is pretty much defenseless and nobody can come
to his aid quickly enough - until he is effectively dead. This, however,
is far from the end of the story ... Wolf McKinney's
directorial debut Gordon Finn is a nice little thriller as it
starts out as a quite conventional (if very well-made) shocker of the
psycho-game variety, quite possibly inspiredc by Silence of the Lambs,
that ends on a mean if somewhat predictably punchline, it then takes the
plot somewhere completely else - while never losing sight of narrative
logic or stringency. On a directorial level, the film is pleasently
unspectacular (without ever being dull), giving suspense and narrative
tension enough room to unfold, and a competent ensemble cast really make
this work. A very nice effort.
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