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Boston Strangler was directed and written by Matt Ruskin and stars Keira Knightley, Carrie Coon, Alessandro Nivola, Chris Cooper, Robert John Burke, Bill Camp, Rory Cochrane, Ryan Winkles, and David Dastmalchian. It’s about the true story of two female journalists who fought for the chance to cover a notable story and connect the crimes of the eponymous killer.

The Plot: Many movies want to be the next incarnation of 2007’s “Zodiac”, but few realize that a big part of what made that feature such a success was its sense of uncertainty, with digressions making up the larger story at hand. Ruskin failed to use that spiraling structure, offering a predictable, yet mostly historically accurate plot instead.

In 1962 Boston, a pattern of murdered women has emerged, yet no one has bothered trying to connect any of them – except Boston Record American writer McLaughlin (Knightley), who’s being tasked with reviewing toasters by her boss Jack (Cooper) instead of investigating. The tune changes when another woman winds up dead, investigative reporter Cole (Coon) is assigned to the case in collaboration with McLaughlin by her boss, Eddie (Burke), against the wishes of police commissioner McNamara (Camp). Herein lies the majority of Boston Strangler’s focus, which is handled adequately, but never memorably.

Jumps in time are shown to try and cover up the thinness of the plot, such as a narrative frame set in 1965 involving Detective DeLine (Cochrane) that comes back later on, but Ruskin mostly keeps things moving linearly with the addition of police support from Detective Conley (Nivola), which adds a procedural element to the movie as suspects like DeSalvo (Dastmalchian) and Marsh (Winkles) to keep things moving towards McLaughlin and Cole’s identification of the killer as more murders occur.

Ruskin charts a decade of progress finely enough and tries to end things on a conspiratorial idea which posits that all of these killings were carried out by more than one person, which is more intriguing by virtue of the audience not knowing whether or not this is true. However, it comes too late to rescue a repetitive cycle of investigation and apathy.

The Characters: With the production so dead set on covering the case’s development, it misses out on characters. Despite the movie’s roster being based almost entirely on real individuals, none of them ever feel that way.

Neither of the reporters are given much in the way of personality or personal life. Although McLaughlin gets a few scenes with her husband, in which her children are in frame, little is gleaned from them. When those are stripped away, she’s an almost identical character to Cole, who’s a jaded workaholic that doesn’t care for the opinions of her male colleagues and just wants to do her job and get the word out to the public. They can both be summarized in an icy glare, which makes them resemble caricatures of determined journalists rather than real people, despite some above average acting from Knightley and Coon.

Because the canned creeps hired to play Boston Strangler’s suspects are paired with simplistic writing, there’s no room for legitimate characterization between them. It’s unsurprising, considering the underwritten protagonists, but still disappointing. The same goes for the generic cop role of Conley, who’s an outlier in his understanding that pairing law enforcement and journalism could solve the case quicker, and his ambition that matches that of the reporters.

Roles are filled with ease, but the movie is far too content reusing cliches to round out people who were surely much more interesting and complex than is portrayed here, even though the whole cast gives performances that aren’t anything to scoff at.

The Drama: The other key feature of “Zodiac” was its emphasis on mystery and paranoia in comparison to the crimes that inspired those feelings. Boston Strangler doesn’t completely rip off that decision, but it does try to do something similar with its social focus, to rather bland effect.

A supposed tenet of the movie is its illustration of sexism in journalism during the 1960s, but this is barely present throughout the runtime; when it is shown, it’s rather banal. When McLaughlin is initially assigned to do product reviews, and when she’s declined by Jack, the movie doesn’t indicate that this has anything to do with her gender (there are already six men covering local crimes). Likewise for almost every similar situation (i.e., writing about theories/not giving every piece of information to the cops), McLaughlin and Cole are told off like anyone would be; the only addition being their addressal with slang titles like “skirt” and “girlie.”

Other, more concerning roadblocks get tackled in Boston Strangler, like the refusal of the city’s police department to engage with the idea of a serial killer for as long as possible. Competing perspectives about running a story condemning the cops for this, misallocating resources, and not sharing information are shown, and the script does a good job of making this into a no-win scenario for the main characters and the city at large. While not an original prospect, there’s a more tangible effect on the environment and situation than the poorly illustrated social issues.

Personal drama is touched on during McLaughlin and Cole’s investigation, with their work routinely bringing victims’ relatives to tears by asking them to recall what they’ve lost. Together with the graphic and anachronistic crimes, although rarely explicit in presentation, create a sense of ugliness and discontent as the feature continues. It’s competent, like many of the movie’s dramatics, but unremarkable and weary of doing something different.

The Technics: As has become necessary in recent years, Boston Strangler is steeped in style. However, the choices made by Ruskin and those below him on the production almost encourage viewers to tune out as fast as possible.

One of the most apparent choices is the complete desaturation and flattening of the setting. A cold location, a sapping of all colors aside from grey and the occasional sickly yellow, and camerawork that frequently blurs everything but whichever character is in center frame makes the movie a visual bore. Together with perpetually dry dialogue, generic cinematography, and journeyman direction, the whole enterprise seems to reject the idea of viewership. This is in direct conflict with the above average efforts from people like costume designer Arjun Bhasin and production designer John P. Goldsmith, who do a good job of selling the setting with handsome work.

Darkness on behalf of the script works to whittle down the audience from the other end. It makes sense to some extent, to put viewers in the same state of mind as the leads, but because of their nonexistent development, the attempt doesn’t land. A methodical pace is expected here as well, which the director adheres to, but does nothing with. Most of his choices are aimed at a specific base, but the ones of importance counteract them in a confusing way.

Boston Strangler wants to use a true story in the most cynical way possible to make a viable product. That kind of conveyor belt filmmaking has its place, but rarely is it as remarkably counterintuitive as this.

49/100