Beware. Michael Caissie’s serial killer film No Tears in Hell is a tough watch, both for its stifling atmosphere and brutal violence. Then again, how many serial killer films – from those New Wave German no budget ‘shockcores’ like Jorg Buttgereit’s Schramm (1983), Gerald Kargl’s Angst (1983) or Fatih Akin’s The Golden Glove (2019)- really want anything other than to absorb the viewer in their vile, stream-of-conscious malcontents in search of some deep character study. Regardless of their shove-our-nose-in-it clarity, it doesn’t mean the films are worthwhile beyond pointed examples of misery. I think to one of the best of its kind, John McNaughton’s Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986), and how it ably portrayed violent actions with a strong sense of time and place to not only disgust but to say something about the nature of violence. To bring it all back to No Tears in Hell, unfortunately it doesn’t stand up anywhere close to McNaughton’s hardcore bolt of lightning. It’s a film that handles consistently morbid subject matter like a Saw sequel, wanting to place us firmly in the headspace of a very deranged young man, but ultimately failing to comment on either the repugnant violence or the random voiceover musings of its murderer.
Existing in a frigid Alaskan landscape of immense poverty and squalid concrete tract apartment housing, young Alex (Luke Baines) finds himself living in an ideal hunting ground of cold, exasperated souls. Offering odd jobs in his apartment or his position of someone who barters common goods in the homeless camps, No Tears in Hell observes as he methodically entices and then ensnares people, eventually brutally murdering them. And just when one thinks this story couldn’t get any more repulsive, in comes his mother (Gwen Van Dam) who dutifully partakes in the post murder cuisine and assists in ridding of the body parts.
And the acts don’t just stop there. Alex plays out every type of ‘ism’ one can imagine. It’s a film that takes place mostly in the square, dimly lit apartment that serves as Alex’s killing floor, kitchen, and body part repository. The film files outside only with several wispy fly-over crane shots in order to show a wintery landscape at the edge of the world that offers very little escape for anyone. These moments of austere beauty are pretty much the only exhalation allowed by a film keenly trapped in the headspace of heinous acts.
Based on the real-life true story of Russian serial killer Alexander Spesivtsiv and his mother Lyudmila, No Tears in Hell hews close to the actual incidents and eventual downfall of the man known as the Siberian Ripper.
Transferring the locale to Alaska from 1990’s Russia but maintaining the animalistic impulses borne from permeated poverty (mentioned in a voiceover that attempts to rationalize some of the killer’s motives), the film even keeps its most sadistic portion for two younger females that Alex covets, something that in real life eventually got him caught.
As the killer, Baines gives a muted performance that’s chilling at times. His eyes are dead, his body movements are smooth and calculated, and he’s certainly a monotone personality devoid of any feeling. However, the biggest problem with No Tears in Hell is its utter commitment to the character’s savagery. Perhaps tailor made for a midnight movie cult audience ready to squeal and squirm with each passing moment, it’s otherwise a film whose vision of suffering and murder are suffocating to watch.
And in a twisted footnote at the end that feels more chilling than anything else, the real Alex was released from prison in 2022. Read about his crimes, and no amount of gory bloodshed and pyrotechnics can make one believe he’s someone ready to re-enter society. Truth, as always, stranger and more terrifying than fiction.
No Tears in Hell will be released on VOD and digital platforms beginning Tuesday August 12th.
Dallas Film Now. 