Echoing comments I heard last night at a Killer Inside Me after-party at Zoom, Screen International‘s David D’Arcy has written that Michael Winterbottom‘s “staggeringly violent” adaptation of Jim Thompson’s 1952 novel “reaches a new extreme in the cinematic depiction of a psychopathic murderer. It is hard to watch — and for some will be impossible — regardless of any psychological logic behind its many killings.

Kate Hudson, Casey Affleck in Michael Winterbottom’s The Killer Inside Me.

“Audiences up to their ears in serial killers may enter this film thinking they already know them all. Winterbottom will prove them wrong.

“Distributors everywhere will be shy of this film, despite Winterbottom’s established reputation. Anyone releasing it will be dogged by its violence, especially towards women. Theatrical response should be similar to Antichrist, another film whose violence is at the extreme of what is watchable. He adds that “audiences [may] attack the film on grounds of misogyny.”

I decided not to attend last night’s Killer Inside Me screening at the Eccles in order to retire to the close-to-freezing Yarrow hotel lobby in order to write my Runaways review.