Mindhunter delves into the dawn of criminal profiling
For many, the scariest movie monster of all is the serial killer. Not the supernatural kind like Jason or Michael Myers, the slashers that carve up teenagers at summer camps over the weekend before slinking back into the darkness until their next film.
Not the Jigsaws, who thrive on torture, or the Leatherfaces that chase unwary travelers through cornfields with chainsaws to hang their victims on meat hooks in their barns.
No, the real serial killers, the ones that look like everyone else, who hold down every day jobs and have every day interactions and blend into the crowd that fills our public squares and churches. There has been a morbid fascination with these men ever sense Norman Bates stabbed an unsuspecting embezzler in the shower at his hotel.
The most realistic ones always hold sway in our minds—we remember Patrick Bateman and Hannibal Lecter, not because of their body count but because of their personalities. They have been immortalized on film, a macabre reminder that humanity hides the real monsters in plain sight and sometimes they come for us because it just wasn’t our night.
It’s strange to think that there was a time when the serial killer was an unknown, when murder wasn’t always investigated scientifically, where evil was the only classification there was for a deranged person.
Mindhunter, Netflix’s newest show produced and occasionally directed by David Fincher, explores the creation of a new classification of criminal, following the FBI’s behavioral science unit as it attempts to understand the worst humanity has to offer. Of course, David Fincher has plenty of experience with sociopaths. His best films focus on this distinct personality type from Se7en to Zodiac to Gone Girl.
Mindhunter has Fincher’s distinct slow burn. Zodiac is likely his best serial killer film—it plays out as a genuine investigation, laying out the players and theories in an engaging and thrilling way, far better than others in the genre. Mindhunter has more in common with Zodiac than Se7en.
From the opening sequence forward, Mindhunter plods in a methodical and deliberate fashion, without flourish or action. For some, the dialogue may come across as stilted and academic—most people don’t speak or interact this way. And yet, the somewhat pedantic flow is endearing in its construction.
The story begins in 1977 and follows Holden Ford, a young hostage negotiator for the FBI who is looking for a new specialty after his latest negotiation goes wrong. Holden becomes attached to the behavioral science unit, which travels across the country to train police officers on criminal psychology and profiling. This is time for low confidence in authority, a few years after Watergate and the end of the Vietnam War.
It is the early days for behavioral science, when any empathy for criminals is seen as wrong. Over the course of the series, Holden begins to challenge conventional wisdom surrounding killers and their motivations, creating a new type of detection out of thin air.
By far, the most captivating parts of the series are the interviews Holden and his partner Bill Tench conduct with imprisoned serial killers.
The two hope to better understand these killers in order to prevent more murders. The methods are being created from the ground up and immediately tested in ongoing criminal cases around the country.
It’s fascinating to watch Holden apply the knowledge he’s gleaned from his conversations, but it’s even more unsettling to watch him descend to their level, changing his very personality to extract information that’s hidden inside the violent, dangerous men locked away for life.
As always, when you stare too long into the abyss, the abyss stares back into you. Mindhunter plays with questions of ethics and responsibility, crossing threshold after threshold in search of something intangible: rationale from the irrational.Like most good binge watching shows, Mindhunter is only ten episodes. It’s easily digestible over a weekend, but ends sooner than most viewers would like. The suspense built in by its meticulous pacing ensures that a second season is necessary.
Hopefully, there are enough viewers for a renewal. Given that Netflix will greenlight just about anything right now, fans of the show can be fairly confident it will return next year. There’s a lot of original content on Netflix right now— Mindhunter is one show that’s worth watching.