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Squealer was directed by Andy Armstrong, written by Armstrong and Danielle Burgio, and stars Wes Chatham, Danielle Burgio, Ronnie Gene Blevins, Theo Rossi, Kate Moennig, Graham Greene, and Tyrese Gibson. It follows a cop and a social worker who investigate several disappearances around town, leading them towards a farmer who feeds his pigs more than grain and veggies.

The Plot: Serial killers are at the center of many a movie, but the best of these stories don’t settle for straightness, instead turning the culprits into pieces of a larger puzzle, or a source of deeper understanding. Exceptions apply, but not to Squealer, which is always stuck doing nothing with something.

In any-town USA, a horrified and injured prostitute lands on the bed of Dr. Joe (Greene), catching the attention of social worker Lisa (Burgio), but not the cops for some reason. Before anyone can figure out the situation, she’s run over by a truck, leaving Lisa to do the work herself. Immediately, Squealer doesn’t make sense, as the entire police department, including officers Jack (Chatham) and Paul (Gibson) don’t do anything at all, much less investigate any crimes within the area. This allows “Squealer” (Blevins) to continue his habitual killing unfettered and allows the movie to coast until other characters enter.

As everyone but Lisa spins their wheels, Danny (Rossi) presents himself as something of a business associate to Squealer, hiring the butcher and his partner Earline (Moennig) to dispose of some bodies. One might think this would incite some kind of plot thread, but it doesn’t, and Armstrong continues to let the movie wander. This is one of those movies that’s all first act setup without anything progressing. When the feature reaches the hour and ten minute mark, it jumps to its final act, forgoing a second to try and create a convergence of characters to wrap things up as tidily as possible in a movie as aimless as this can.

In the strictest sense, Squealer reach a conclusion. However, it’s not a narrative one – just a runtime one. Nothing happens. Nothing changes.

The Characters: Inspecting the minds of the evil and deluded by way of the crime is a tried-and-true method that also acts as a means to round out the people doing the investigating. Armstrong and Burgio’s script, however, is a nonstarter, with a roster of interchangeable nothing characters who have zero personality.

Jack does nothing with or to other characters in Squealer aside from pushing them away. In a capable writer’s hands, there would be a point or motive for that behavior, but the closest this movie gets is referencing a fledgling relationship between him and Lisa. Much like everything else in this movie, that also goes nowhere, at least on-screen, despite the vaguest tease of a reappraisal of love when Jack declines a female officer’s advances.

Lisa herself is a social worker with a heart of gold getting friendly with everyone and patrolling the streets for prostitutes in hopes of sending them on their way to a less abusive lifestyle. This at least justifies her relentless search for the ones that go missing throughout the runtime of the movie, but the script never adds any other reason besides that. While it may not be necessary to have a motive or backstory, it would’ve gone a long way in making Lisa into a character instead of a blank slate.

Theodore – AKA “Squealer” – comes off as a caricature of serial killers, despite Blevins’ efforts to give some charm to the man. He’s essentially Leatherface without the infantilized mind, opting to continue working at a local deli, live in a dingy apartment, operate out of a decrepit farm, and – of course – engage in cannibalism. The filmmakers try to humanize him by giving him a kinda sorta connection to Earline, an addict who assists him in his process while trying to pull him away from his urges. It doesn’t work in Armstrong’s hands, but it comes close, which is at least something human in Squealer’s litany of non-characters.

The Crime: While ostensibly a procedural mixed in with the murder business, neither of those two facets of crime cinema are incorporated into the product on hand. The movie does at least live up to its gimmick, but at a great cost to structure or insight.

Although one of the main characters is a police officer, Lisa is the only one even occasionally making an effort to find the missing women. In an immeasurably weird decision, Squealer doesn’t even try to justify why this is the case; other ongoing cases aren’t brought up, nor is an understaffed police force. The movie just asks the audience to accept that no one does their jobs in this town. That might’ve been acceptable (if unbelievable) if this made way for Lisa’s investigation, but it doesn’t. Procedural stuff is limited to watching her ask prostitutes where their peers went and not following up on the answers.

Conversion of human bodies into packaged meat sold in plain sight is the gimmick here, and it definitely comes off as just a gimmick. Instead of offering a compelling look into how Theodore or someone like him could get away with what he does, Squealer presents the murders as a substitute; a first act establishment dragged out until the end. While there are a few interesting scenes detailing how Theodore and Earline lure their victims to places where they can kill them via a practiced act, the movie doesn’t do anything with that idea other than depict it in halfhearted measures.

Crime movies obviously need to get their concepts and conceits across to the audience for a full examination, which Squealer undeniably does, but the next logical step would be said examination. Unfortunately, there’s none of that here, as the movie quickly falls into vapid repetition.

The Technics: In recent years, the cinemascape has seen an increasing number of stunt coordinators and performers make the leap to the director’s chair. For some, the transition was seamless, for Armstrong – a man tremendously talented at both coordination and performance – it’s a complete mess.

Basic filmic elements like keeping crew members out of frame and maintaining a consistent color palette in similar environments are mishandled with frequency throughout the runtime. Another sign of unfamiliarity with helming an entire feature is the lack of tone or angle; not that it’s inconsistent, but that there isn’t one at all. Things just happen in frame as though the production was working through a checklist, droning on without style or tension. Sparse scoring, meaningless dialogue, and a carousel of characters entering and exiting Squealer give off an almost indescribable air of nothing.

One department that works adeptly is that of the makeup and effects team. This is, if nothing else, a grisly film that doesn’t shy away from the depraved. It’s gore for the sake of having gore, but at least the sights of refrigerated limbs and eyeballs, the disemboweling of a prostitute, and feeding of unusable parts to pigs is convincing. Additions to Earline and many extras, such as decayed teeth and bruised skin are far less competent, but the gimmick was at least attended to, I suppose.

Most parts of Squealer don’t add up to a sum of anything. There are a few decent scenes and good turns from Blevins and Moennig, but everything else is just fat without any taste.

20/100