If you’ve ever hyped yourself up for a horror movie based on a killer trailer, only to walk out of the theater going “wait, that’s it?“, then pull up a chair. On this episode of Grave Tone, Meaghan and Arthur came home from a Friday night screening of Psycho Killer (released February 20, 2026) with a lot of feelings, most of them best described as confused disappointment.
Meaghan was even fighting off a cold the whole time, recording with a voice that, as Arthur generously put it, sounded like she’d been “smoking 25 packs of cigarettes.” Dedication, honestly. That’s what you call loving the craft.
This one had been on their radar for a while. The trailers were everywhere, the social media buzz was real, and for Meaghan specifically, this felt like it was going to scratch that serial killer crime thriller itch she loves so much. Arthur even came into it thinking it could be “like Long Legs but better.” Spoiler: it was not.
A Decade-Plus in Development Hell (And It Shows)
Here’s where things get genuinely interesting, because the backstory of Psycho Killer is honestly wilder than the movie itself. The screenplay was written by Andrew Kevin Walker, who, yes, wrote Se7en. That Se7en. He also worked on Sleepy Hollow, 8 Millimeter, and contributed to Love, Death & Robots.
The original script dates back to 2007, and at various points along the way, Fred Durst was attached to direct, and Eli Roth was set to produce. Neither of those things happened, and the film finally landed with Gavin Polone in the director’s chair.
This is Polone’s directorial debut, though he’s been producing since the nineties with credits that include Stir of Echoes, Panic Room, Zombieland, and even Cold Storage, which the hosts had just reviewed the week before. “Hey, look at that,” Meaghan said when she spotted it on the list. It was a genuinely fun moment of recognition.
Sixteen years in development. That’s not a production cycle, that’s a lifestyle. And we think it shows in the finished film. The whole thing has this strange, ambiguous quality to it, like it can’t quite figure out what era it wants to live in. There are newspapers, pay phones, library books, and a whole analog aesthetic that screams early 2000s.
Then someone pulls out what is very clearly a modern smartphone, and the whole illusion collapses instantly. Meaghan and Arthur spent a solid few minutes being genuinely furious about this, especially once they worked out that the film references the twentieth anniversary of the Three Mile Island nuclear accident of 1979, which would place the story in 1999. A Google Pixel in 1999. Sure…
Oh, and one more fun fact: this is the first widely released film distributed under the Disney umbrella to land a 0% on Rotten Tomatoes, because Disney acquired 20th Century Studios. “I feel like that clicked in my head,” Arthur said. The PG-almost quality of the horror, the pulled punches on the gore, it all started to make sense.
What the Movie Is Actually About (Spoilers Ahead)
The film follows Jane Archer, a state trooper played by Georgina Campbell, whose husband, also a patrolman, is killed during a routine traffic stop by a serial killer the press has dubbed the Satanic Slasher. This killer has been traveling across the United States, murdering people in ritualistic ways for long enough that the body count sits somewhere around 48 victims. Jane then goes after him herself, driven by grief and a need to stop the rampage before it escalates further.
Georgina Campbell, the hosts agree, is genuinely great here. “She’s really turning into a modern-day screen queen,” Meaghan said, and both of them noted that Campbell gives everything she has to a role that doesn’t give her a whole lot to work with in return. She carries significant portions of the film on her own and does so with total commitment.
The killer himself is played by stunt performer James Preston Rogers and is presented as a largely physical presence. You never see his face. The mask he wears is original and genuinely cool-looking, and the hosts appreciated the visual design of the character.
Where things fell apart was the voice. Someone, at some point in post-production, made the decision to give this terrifying satanic murderer the deep, gravelly Batman voice that immediately reminded Meaghan of Will Arnett. “I was trying not to laugh,” she admitted, and honestly, same. It happened multiple times throughout the screening, and it killed the tension every single time.
Malcolm McDowell appears in a small role as a vague satanic cult leader, a character who basically exists to run what amounts to a drug-and-sex operation with a thin occult veneer, and then disappears from the plot without doing much of anything meaningful. Logan Miller, who plays a cult member named Marvin, was a highlight for both hosts. Arthur recognized him as Ben from the Escape Room films and found him genuinely engaging on screen.
The killer’s motivation, to the extent one exists, is that he’s trying to recreate the Three Mile Island meltdown to open a portal to hell. It’s a concept that could have been wild and unnerving in the right hands. Here, it just kind of sits there.
We also get a reveal near the end suggesting the killer may have been a death row inmate used in military experiments, information fed to us through a radio conspiracy broadcast playing while Jane drives. If you blink, you’ll miss it.
Where It All Goes Wrong: Pacing, Tone, and a Metal Band That Goes Nowhere
The biggest issue, and both Meaghan and Arthur kept circling back to this, is that the movie simply does not commit. It introduces a satanic killer, a conspiracy angle, a metal band subplot, a revenge narrative, and an occult mythology, and then doesn’t properly develop any of them. The script moves like a highlight reel of plot points rather than a story with connective tissue. “We’re already here? We’re already at this point?” Meaghan said of the pacing, and we felt that deeply.
The metal band, in particular, was a major point of frustration. It’s introduced in a way that seems to be gesturing at the Satanic Panic era, that stretch of time in the eighties and nineties when people with certain tastes in music and fashion were treated as dangerous by default.
Meaghan brought up the West Memphis Three as an example of how genuinely serious and harmful that cultural moment was for real people. The film, though, barely scratches the surface of any of that. The band shows up, implies a connection to the killer, and then goes absolutely nowhere. “It meant nothing at all,” Meaghan said, visibly irritated. And she’s right. If you’re going to use that kind of historical weight as a backdrop, you owe it more than a throwaway.
The kills themselves are mostly cutaways. What gore exists is restrained to the point of feeling almost accidental. The satanic elements don’t go far enough to feel either threatening or meaningfully symbolic. And there’s a scene involving a woman being flattened by a runaway 18-wheeler while the killer simply steps aside and walks away that the hosts found so tonally bizarre they couldn’t quite tell if it was supposed to be funny. It wasn’t clear from the film either. “I don’t think it’s supposed to be funny,” Meaghan said. Probably not. But it kind of is.
The script feels, and we say this with some sympathy, given the development timeline, like a 2007 draft that never got meaningfully updated. “It really did have a distinctly made-for-TV early 2000s vibe to the script,” Meaghan said, and that’s an accurate read. The motivations are thin, the red herrings are nonexistent, and the movie telegraphs its beats so far in advance that there’s almost no room left to be surprised.
What Actually Worked
To be fair to the film and to their format, Meaghan and Arthur always find three things they liked, even in the movies that let them down. Here, they landed on the cinematography, the analog aesthetic (phone scandal aside), and the score.
There are specific shots in Psycho Killer that show real intention. Some killer-POV work in and around a vehicle, where the camera moves with genuine fluidity and menace, suggested a director who has a visual sense worth watching develop. It doesn’t save the film, but it stands out.
The analog texture of the production design, the pay phones, the library books, the newspapers, was effective right up until it wasn’t. And the soundtrack, Meaghan said she’s planning to pull some tracks for a playlist, had a genuinely strong selection of music that fit the intended mood well.
The killer’s look, outside of the voice, was also a point of agreement. The mask is original and unsettling, and the physical presence Rogers brings to the role is legitimately imposing. The tattoos, most of them anyway, didn’t end up meaning much, but the no mercy tattoo on his left hand does pay off briefly near the end, and the radioactive symbol connects to the Three Mile Island thread. Small things, but the hosts noticed.
Final Scores and What’s Coming Next
Both hosts landed at a 3 out of 10. Meaghan briefly threatened to drop to a 2 after fully working out the timeline math on the phone and the Three Mile Island anniversary. “This is so annoying,” she said, and the hosts shared a genuine moment of mutual frustration that was very relatable. Arthur bumped her score to a 3.5 on the strength of the cinematography and the score, and that felt about right.
The bottom line is that Psycho Killer had real potential. A seasoned genre screenwriter, a long development history, a lead actress who’s genuinely excellent, a killer with a cool visual identity, and an interesting real-world touchstone in Three Mile Island.
What it lacked was commitment. It didn’t go hard enough on the horror, didn’t build enough tension, didn’t develop the mythology, and didn’t trust its own concept. “It lives in this wishy washy middle ground,” Arthur said, and that’s the most accurate summary of the whole experience.
As for what’s coming up on Grave Tone, the hosts teased a lot. There’s an interview with Mark Acheson, the voice of Charlie from Silent Night, Deadly Night.
A conversation with a horror author is in the pipeline. There’s a screener of a film set for March release that has them genuinely excited.
And the following week, rather than reviewing Scream 7, they’ll be covering the adaptation of Courtney Summers’ This Is Not a Test, a zombie film that Meaghan has already read the source novel for, which should make for a great watch-and-compare episode.
Oh, and there’s a horror movie recommendation quiz being built into the Grave Tone website. Four questions, personalized picks, no ads. Worth checking out when it drops.
Until then, stay scared.