The Criagslist Killer – Movie Review

The Craigslist Killer had a great premise. Philip Markoff is a charming, excellent medical student with a bright future and a beautiful fiancée. It was a shock to the community and authorities at the time, that he was behind some attacks on women and even a murder. The problem with this movie is poor writing of the plot and underwhelming execution. 

Throughout the film, the entire plot did not seem to flow and various scenes were shown without any proper explanation to them. For example, the first 40 minutes of the film was spent on building the outsider perception of Philip. His success, brilliance and charm were convincingly conveyed. Even his relationship with Megan was portrayed to be beautiful. However, out of a sudden, Philip was seen looking for exotic masseuse on Craigslist. We were left wondering if this was a habit he had from the beginning or if that was the first time he did it. 

The climax was also, sadly to say, anti-climatic. The police car chase scene seemed pretty straight forward and Philip showed almost no resistance to his capture. Perhaps the writer wanted to stay true to the original incident, and the real Philip’s arrest was indeed quite simple. Nevertheless, the build up and character background gave the audience close to no connection to the character nor the story. Plus, there did not seem to be any “brilliant” strategy on Philip’s end to cover his tracks, other than hiding his gun in his medical book. This made the eventual arrest fell flat.