Albert H. Fish is a prolific serial killer who targets young children, killing them & eating their bodies afterwards, who haunted New York City in the 1920s. He cons his way into a poor family's home & kidnaps their young daughter, pretending to take her to a birthday party. He takes the girl to an isolated house where he kills her & eats her body. When she fails to return, the family calls in the police. Missing Persons Unit detective William King dedicates himself to the case & attempts to track down Fish. But Fish is an exceptionally clever killer & the only thing that stands in King's way is Fish's deteriorating mental state.
This is a retelling of one of 1920s America's most infamous serial killers. While many aspects of the story shown here are fabricated for the narrative's sake, the fact remained that Albert H. Fish was a menace to society at the time.
The film does a good job of recreating 1920s' America, right down to the buildings & shop-signs (where you could get a soda for only 10 cents!) & the attitudes of the society at the time. Also of note is the fact that the limited forensic resources of the era allowed Fish to kill & eat as many children as he ultimately did & that the detective in charge of the case nearly lost his sanity chasing down the killer. The film is not perfect, but director Scott Flynn manages to make a passable detective yarn & in part an insight into how such a deranged mind could wreak as much havoc as he did at the time. Patrick Bauchau dives deep into the Fish character with fearless abandon, portraying a disturbed mind who was partly shaped by the bad childhood he experienced in the orphanage he grew up in (the ghostly pale boy that appears in some scenes is meant to be a symbol of Fish's lost childhood). For the supporting cast, Jack Conley is solid as the detective after Fish while Silas Weir Mitchell, who Steven Seagal fans will remember as the militia's second in command in the uber-flop The Patriot, does his role as Fish's unwitting son well. The only flaws in the film were the portrayal of the dead girl's mother as a complete attention-seeking buffoon & the somewhat slow pace but the film remains a reasonable entry in the thriller genre.
This is a retelling of one of 1920s America's most infamous serial killers. While many aspects of the story shown here are fabricated for the narrative's sake, the fact remained that Albert H. Fish was a menace to society at the time.
The film does a good job of recreating 1920s' America, right down to the buildings & shop-signs (where you could get a soda for only 10 cents!) & the attitudes of the society at the time. Also of note is the fact that the limited forensic resources of the era allowed Fish to kill & eat as many children as he ultimately did & that the detective in charge of the case nearly lost his sanity chasing down the killer. The film is not perfect, but director Scott Flynn manages to make a passable detective yarn & in part an insight into how such a deranged mind could wreak as much havoc as he did at the time. Patrick Bauchau dives deep into the Fish character with fearless abandon, portraying a disturbed mind who was partly shaped by the bad childhood he experienced in the orphanage he grew up in (the ghostly pale boy that appears in some scenes is meant to be a symbol of Fish's lost childhood). For the supporting cast, Jack Conley is solid as the detective after Fish while Silas Weir Mitchell, who Steven Seagal fans will remember as the militia's second in command in the uber-flop The Patriot, does his role as Fish's unwitting son well. The only flaws in the film were the portrayal of the dead girl's mother as a complete attention-seeking buffoon & the somewhat slow pace but the film remains a reasonable entry in the thriller genre.