The Plot:
After her father passes away, KatieBird Wilkens feels lost and alone. She invites her doctor over for comfort, and after a few pleasantries, she decides to tell him the truth about her life. Chaining him to the bed and forcibly raping him, she begins to explain her entire existence, from her earliest memories of childhood to the time she discovered her dad's true calling. Apparently, Papa was quite the successful serial killer, and it wasn't long before KatieBird was ready to follow in the old man's bloodstained footsteps. As she re-enacts tortures on her "captive" audience, we witness the first time that our teen queen became a mad, maniacal murderess. As conflicting emotions fill the air, our nutzoid narrator continues to carve and cut. She wants to be hurt as well, to feel the pain she is inflicting as a symbiotic sign of love. Like her parent before her, this troubled woman is a horrible harbinger of death. But she is also sick, easily labeled as KatieBird *Certifiable Crazy Person.

The DVD:
Justin Pal Ritter doesn't know the definition of the word "quit". He doesn't take "NO" for an answer and relentlessly pursues his creative ideas to the detriment of his own individual comfort. Fully believing in the motto "movies, NOT excuses", Ritter believes in following one's dreams to the bitter - or sometimes better - end, and has full faith and confidence that others will appreciate his efforts. And for the first half of his cinematic debut, KatieBird *Certifiable Crazy Person, he has a point. Delivering a deceptively fresh take on the entire spree killer concept, Ritter takes us into the past of a sadistic, insane murderess named KatieBird Wilkens, and walks us through the events leading up to her descent into torture and killing. Unfortunately, just like his freakishly focused credo, Ritter didn't know when to stop. Instead of working within the bloody if subtle set-up he created, proving that insanity can be derived from organic as well as outlandish elements, he decided to drop all manner of restraint and go for broke. The result is a farcical flop of irritating proportion, a slaughter party pastiche of overblown homages and self-styled shock value, all wrapped up in a nearly inert narrative that takes its own sweet time finding a fitting conclusion.

Indeed, KatieBird is not the first in a long line of schizophrenic productions, but it does play out as one of the most obvious. Like the moment when Maynard closes the door on Zed and Marsellus during the infamous 'Gimp' scene in Pulp Fiction, our director here challenges the audience to accept something completely out of character and tonally fatalistic to all that came before. Sure, we had a woman tying up and torturing her seducer/doctor, and lots of talk about Daddy's love of secrecy and slaughter. But before we get to what is best defined as the 'orchard' episode, we are completely in tune with the film. Ritter has fashioned some excellent individual moments (the kids at the crosswalk, a young KatieBird staring into a crack in the forbidden barn walls) and we enjoy the way the film is building up to a big reveal. We want to know what her father is doing in that sinister shed, and even when it's exposed, we except the interesting amount of anticlimactic emotion created.

But the minute a teenage KatieBird tracks and torments a boy who dumped her, seeking a sort of emotional payback through her lineage's leanings toward pain and vivisection, the movie goes weird, then wonky. We don't understand our heroine's sudden descent into outright masochism - it is a shift so sudden you wonder why we weren't better prepared for it - and equally, her father's reactions fail to follow the narrative that we've known from the past 45 minutes. It's as if Ritter had two different scripts in mind, and once the Jolt Cola and Doritos kicked in, he decided against a character study and wanted to craft some kind of softcore snuff film. Sadly, this is all the film has to offer from this point forward. KatieBird is seen discovering the joys of dental damage, and figuring out how to use a hack saw to see a person's 'real face'. These scenes might have been powerful had they been written, staged and formulated more fully, but Ritter disregards tone and flow to spend endless, dull moments in mental manipulation, talky villain dynamics, and overblown sequences of supposedly perceptive silences. When you end up making gore groan inducing, and not from the amount of claret collected, you are doing something disturbingly wrong.

KatieBird really should be better than it is. The actors all believe in this project, from a volatile yet vulnerable Helene Udy (in the adult version of the title role) to Lee Perkins as the cold, considered murderous father figure. We never once doubt the performances, and even with Ritter's unfathomable decision to steal directly from Brian DePalma and present everything - and I do mean EVERYTHING - in several split screen segments, the roles resonate with truth and authenticity. Another comment on the filmic format here: the multi-camera conceit is just gratuitous and gimmicky. It is never used to add insight or hidden elements to the story. Like having your remote control jammed on auto alternate angle for the entire running time, KatieBird creates more confusion than clarity with this post-production trick. Still, when used in conjunction with a smattering of individual control, this movie actually makes sense. But the sudden shift in mood and morbidity provides little more than an eerie emperor's new clothes, and the reveal is just redundant. KatieBird tried to be something different. But Ritter actually didn't believe in his initial, iconoclastic view of the family that slays together. By going for grue and the gratuitous, he ends up with an aggravating excuse for a fright flick.

The Video:
Though it occasionally feels like a student film run amuck, one has to admit that KatieBird *Certifiable Crazy Person looks pretty good. Ritter's reliance on multiple screens calls into question the amount of post-production work done on the image, but the visuals still smack of a proper, professional level of technical skill. Several scenes look sensational, especially all the nostalgic flashbacks of our anti-heroine as a little girl. Though it is hard to determine a true framing configuration, it is safe to say that this is a 1.85:1 non-anamorphic widescreen presentation.

The Audio:
While the total sonic situation here is very strong, there are quibbles that undermine what is otherwise a thoroughly adequate aural presentation. The choice of chaotic rock music is interesting, especially since it seems to be in perfect sync with the gloomy Goth guy and gal demographic that will almost certainly enjoy the film. The spatial elements are equally impressive, with a nice sense of the outdoors and the claustrophobia of KatieBird's bedroom. Where the mix meanders is in the dialogue department. Occasionally, the characters speak in solemn whispers, and it is hard to hear what they are saying over the surrounding cacophony. Still, we don't miss much, and without a full 5.1 expansion, the Dolby Digital Stereo is just fine.

The Extras:
As part of their packaging strategy, Heretic Films fleshes out the KaiteBird DVD with several interesting added features. First and foremost is a full-length audio commentary. Present are Ritter and actors Udy, Perkins and Taylor M. Dooley, who plays the teen version of the title character. While the performers pile on the personal stories, Ritter is all business. His is a step-by-step discussion of how he finally stopped complaining about his creative lot in life and did something about it. It's an approach he continues with the featurette "Movies NOT Excuses". More or less a tirade about whining wannabes who undermine their dreams with a self-defeating attitude, we get some behind the scenes footage in between the rants. There is also a mini-documentary on the make-up effects, a smug set of liner notes (authored by Ritter, obviously) and a series of trailers. If you are a fan of KatieBird's creative conceits, you will enjoy its maker's mania. If you think his film has flaws, however, you'll grow tired of this auteur's self-important stance.

Final Thoughts:
Perhaps it's time to call a moratorium on the serial killer film. Maybe the subject has been so overdone that filmmakers find it nearly impossible to discover new and novel ways to make the same old slaughter feel fresh and alive. The answer for Jason Paul Ritter was to combine the tired with the trippy to create a surreal statement of truth and torture. Had he simply settled down and realized that there was a thoroughly engrossing movie to be made about a young girl's slow descent into communal killing, we'd have that elusive inventive take on a exhausted idea. As it stands though, KatieBird *Certifiable Crazy Person is only half an interesting movie. The rest is just senseless slaughter set pieces. Though there is definitely enough here to warrant a rating of Rent It, you will need to view the film once before deciding on adding it to your collection. Perhaps like this critic, you will sense that, somehow, this filmmaker has failed to reach you. Truth be told, he wasn't aiming for you in the first place. The first fissure in the cinematic generation gap has been revealed, and it's called KatieBird *Certifiable Crazy Person.

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