Review of Interview with a Serial Killer

"Interview with a Serial Killer" is a 44-minute American documentary short film from 2008, so this one still has its 10th anniversary this year and according to imdb, it is the only filmmaking effort by director Christopher Martin. The star or "star" in here is Arthur Shawcross, an old man who was convicted of having killed a double-digit amount of people in his life. And we have the interviewer ask several questions to him about his crimes, but also his life in general. In-between we get to see scenes from locations and police investigations connected with the murders while also listening to interviews with people that were linked to them like a judge for example. It should not be taken for granted this documentary got made because Shawcross died the exact same year this got released, so it was a close call. subject-wise it was pretty much exactly what I expected. It does not really stand out quality-wise compared to other documentaries about (serial) killers, but still offers a nice summary on the subject of Art Shawcross and the fact that he comments on a lot definitely makes it even more worth seeing. A good watch overall and I recommend checking it out. The material in terms of graphic depiction or graphic language is also not so severe that a mild-mannered person with an interest in the case(s) cannot watch it. Of course, there are still a whole lot question marks if he killed more people than was found out about or how true these accusations against his mother really were. I will end my review now with some words by Shawcross himself because very early on he says something along the lines that he is indeed an evil man, but at the end he seems to struggle with elaborating on the two times he killed children, which either shows how he sees this as an unjust act, but maybe could not suppress his evil spirit back then or it could be a completely different reason. Nobody knows. Nobody ever will. Thumbs up for these three quarters of an hour from me. Recommended.