Critique: Film> Reviews.

Journalist Brian Kessler (David Duchovny) and his artist girlfriend Carrie (Michelle Forbes) are looking to move to California, where they will collaborate on a book about infamous serial killers. They decide to go on a road trip and stop off at famous murder sites to take photographs and make notes. White-trash couple Early Grayce (Brad Pitt) and Adele Corners (Juliette Lewis) are also along for the ride, in order to cut fuel expenses, and generally become stupider and weirder as time wears on.

Kalifornia threatens on numerous occasions to give some psychological depth to serial killers, but ends up being completely shallow -- there is hardly any insight into why Early ends up butchering the people like he does. Maybe the film could be forgiven in such instance if it was actually compelling and chilling to watch, but the bottom line is it's pretty dull.

Actually, the only intriguing part of the film that I found was Lewis, who was strangely admirable as the mentally-challenged girlfriend, reluctant to believe in her fella's bad ways. Other than that, Kalifornia lacked a considerable amount of suspense and memorable thrills -- that's hardly impressive for a film that is filed under the 'Thriller' genre, is it?

(C) Andy Carrington, 2009.