After quite an impressive year that saw several horror movies make our overall Best of 2025 list, there’s been some concern amongst our staff about the quality of scares coming our way on the 2026 movie release calendar. When it comes to Psycho Killer, which hit theaters on February 20, those worries might be warranted, as critics screened the serial killer thriller, and they are not holding back their thoughts on this “vapid, generic form of hell.”
Psycho Killer stars Georgina Campbell as a police officer bent on taking down the “Satanic Slasher” (James Preston Rogers) after witnessing the murder of her state trooper husband at the hands of the serial killer. Eric Goldman of MovieWeb gives it a “Skippable” 2 out of 5, writing that the lack of intensity is especially disappointing given the fact that the script comes from Andrew Kevin Walker, the writer of Se7en, which is one of the best horror movies of all time. Goldman says:
Psycho Killer is operating at a surprisingly surface level that feels rather old-fashioned and pearl-clutching by implicitly saying, ‘You know what, all that Satanic panic back in the day was probably justified, because jeez, look at this guy!’ Given all that, one would hope the movie at least delivered on the shock and mayhem the title implies with some truly outrageous and wild killing scenes. But while there are many bluntly brutal deaths involving guns, axes and hammers, little of it is all that creative or memorable in terms of slasher movie killers.
William Bibbiani of The Wrap says a more appropriate Talking Heads song to use as the movie’s title would have been “Road to Nowhere,” as not even scream queen Georgina Campbell can save this “aimless, boring” movie. The actress does what she can, but the critic says her character is “a note card with the word ‘PROTAGONIST’ on it, followed by the letters ‘TBD.’” Bibbiani continues:
If you watch the new horror movie Psycho Killer (not recommended), you’ll recognize a familiar sensation. It’s not boredom, although don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of that. No, it’s the sneaking suspicion that you’re watching a project that fell out of time. In this case it comes from the mid-2000s, when a grungy, vicious serial killer film could get away with a half-baked plot and one-note characters if — and this is a big ‘if’ — it also had a lot of style. Sadly, Psycho Killer wasn’t made with style in mind. Actually, it doesn’t seem to have anything on its mind. It’s a rudimentary cat-and-mouse thriller with laughable ideas about Satanism and an absurd, cringy ending.
Meagan Navarro of Bloody Disgusting gives the upcoming horror movie just 1.5 skulls out of 5, saying that the equal attention paid to the officer and the serial killer results in overexposing the monster and thereby desensitizing audiences to his actions. Ultimately, the “illogical and inconsequential” plotting led this critic to apathy. Navarro say:
A series of barebones scenes strung together without much thought does not a feature make. At least not a good one. Psycho Killer never plausibly builds upon its grieving cop versus Satanic serial killer premise, ensuring the journey remains as superficial as it is dull, right through to its baffling conclusion. There are fleeting glimpses of personality that tease an entertaining horror movie buried somewhere deep within this flat, superficial, and incoherent rough draft. Instead it’s just a vapid, generic form of hell.
Tyler Nichols of JoBlo rates the movie a “Terrible” 3 out of 10, writing that Psycho Killer “fails in nearly every regard.” The killer is “so damn lame,” the critic says, the CGI blood is some of the worst he’s seen, and some of the “cringy” line readings made him literally laugh out loud. Nichols’ review continues:
I’m actually kind of gobsmacked with just how bad Psycho Killer ended up being. Nearly every single moment becomes so silly in a film that should have been a disturbing look at the mind of a killer. Instead, we’re given tame violence, a laughable bad guy, and a lead that needs some sense shaken into her.
Ross Bonaime of Collider gives Psycho Killer a 4 out of 10, saying it’s frustrating that there are hints of a better movie here, but they’re all ultimately buried by overdone tropes, silly choices made by paper-thin characters, and a bland villain. Bonaime says:
Maybe it’s the multiple decades of limbo for this script that have turned this into little more than an amalgamation of horror clichés, or maybe it’s that Polone simply doesn’t have what it takes to make this story into something worthwhile, but Psycho Killer is a disappointment of a slasher. It’s a shame because the potential is absolutely there, but the vision isn’t clear, nor does it find enough of its own path to walk. There are fractured elements that, with a little polish, could’ve been something much more, but this is just a generic, unremarkable horror film. As the Talking Heads once said about a psycho killer, run run run run run run run awaaaaaay.
As Psycho Killer hit theaters on Friday, it holds a 0% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes, though only 17 critics had weighed in at the time of this writing. The audience’s Popcornmeter was a more-forgiving 34%, but those numbers are likely to change through the weekend.
Regardless of how the critics scored the movie, if this flick is one you want to see, you should definitely venture out to the theater to draw your own conclusions. Hopefully your experience is better than the critics’ above.