He hides under a mask. He wields a chainsaw or knife or claw or hook (and he’s almost always a he for some reason). He might be undead, or he might still be living, but he is a force of nature regardless. He might dress in robes or a clown costume or even his dead mother’s dress. And while the antagonists of Halloween and Scream might be good for a quick scare, there’s a deeper terror in the serial killer. While there are certainly some historical forebears like Jack the Ripper, the serial killer seems to be primarily a modern fascination. Devious, intelligent, and hopelessly sadistic— serial killers represent all of our perceived genius in modernity without any of the moral compulsion.

Movies about serial killers often invite a scary question: Could I ever be pushed that far? Sure, there are the seemingly supernatural killing machines like Michael Myers and Jason Vorhees, but more recently, real life killers like Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, and Aileen Wuornos have captured the national attention. Through documentaries, podcasts, and movies, their darkness has fascinated millions, charming and unsettling viewers and listeners. It’s not so much being the victim of one of these killers that scares us; it’s the terror lurking inside their minds and the fear that we might actually begin to relate to them— that they could easily be friends or family members or even us. After all, wasn’t that the real terror of the Saw franchise: not that we might be tortured and mutilated by Jigsaw, but that there was always an apprentice waiting in the wings to take up the mantle, a disciple who bought into the killer’s demented worldview?

In the past few weeks the new Joker movie has courted controversy by again inviting this serial killer dilemma. Borrowing heavily from the Martin Scorcese films The King of Comedy and Taxi Driver, the new Joker film purportedly works on the premise that people are always teetering on the edge of anarchy— a disquieting thought given our epidemic of mass shootings and politically motivated violence, which has added to the movie’s controversy. According to reviews (since I just don’t have time for movie theaters these days), the film depicts a man failed by the system and increasingly isolated, an antihero searching for recognition until he at last “snaps” and commits acts of murder. But is that really what the Joker character was about, and is that really how mental illness works?

Alan Moore’s Batman: The Killing Joke, arguably the definitive Joker story and one inspiration for the new film, tests the Joker’s philosophy that any of us is always one bad day away from becoming a deranged killer. That’s how the Joker tells his origin story: he was a desperate struggling comedian, a soon-to-be family man who was finally pushed too far. Joker spends the graphic novel setting up one such bad day for Commissioner Gordon and Batman, but he fails. Batman and Gordon, though mourning and hurting by the story’s end, retain their sanity, morality, and self-control. While the ending is somewhat ambiguous, the story’s ultimate point is that we are not all on the edge of insanity, and the Joker’s psychosis goes far deeper, unlike Gordon or Batman (though I’d argue a millionaire martial artist who attacks desperate criminals in alleyways isn’t really the model of sanity either).

So are all of us really on the brink of homicidal madness at any moment? Are we in danger of being chased by homicidal killers or having one bad day which drives us to commit these acts ourselves? Probably not. But these movies and comicbooks highlight just how much stigma and fear we still have around mental health, be it others’ or our own. The overwhelming majority of people experiencing mental illness are not dangerous to society; they’re not Jokers or Norman Bateses or Leatherfaces in the making; they’re hurting and scared and in need of support. Sure, the movies may provide some fun scares, and some are even thought-provoking, but we have to be careful which assumptions about mental health we encourage audiences to buy into. Yes, the idea of a deranged madman acting as an agent of chaos is darkly exciting, but what vulnerable members of our society are stereotyped because of these kinds of stories?

So yeah, that’s why serial killer movies are scary,
but maybe we need to handle this genre more thoughtfully.