Pretty Good

How sad is this?

best movie i've ever seen.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

"Henry: Portrait of a serial killer" belongs to a certain type of films which are not wanted but needed. The film raised many controversies ever since it's initial release, and nobody who already watched it wonders why. It's disgusting, violent, raw, but most of all it is honest. Imagine a combination of "Peeping Tom" and "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" and now amplify the final result. The media and the society itself has always been fascinated about killers for several reasons: why they do it, how they get away with it, but most of all how they do it. The final question never got a fair answer in cinematography until Henry came along. An extremly low-budget film, "Henry" manages to create reactions only because of it's honesty, showing explicit scenes of violence through the eyes of a tormented man. The characters are unhappy and live in a grey world where boredom is a routine and it destroys people from the inside. Infamous scenes like the one when Henry (Micharl Rooker) and Otis (Tom Towells) watch a tape of their own murderous acts ruin society's fascination about serial killers. Most people will not want to watch this movie a second time, but everyone should watch it at least once. It may lack the vegetarian message of "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" or the love story of "Peeping Tom", but it shows us how reality is like and it doesn't lie to us about serial killers and violence. Henry is the " Unforgiven" of horror film.

An absolute must see for fans of serial killer films. This is one of the best, inspired by an actual killer and his accomplice, it's a very unrestrained look at an artist who's particular talents are expressed with graphically realistic violence. The direction and action are top notch for the minuscule budget it was made on. One of those rare horror films that sits with you well after it's over. Check it out.

The real life evil of convicted killer Henry Lee Lucas has been well documented elsewhere. This film is a semi-fictional account, based on Lucas' "confessions" ... for what they're worth. In the film, Henry lives with his ex-prison buddy Otis, and Otis' sister Becky, played well by Tracy Arnold. The setting is Chicago. The historical time period is unclear.Most, though not all, of the murders take place off screen, mercifully. It's still, at times, a grizzly affair. Much of the film is like a diary, in that we see Henry, Otis, and Becky engaged in slow, lengthy, pointless conversations, amid drab surroundings. Oh it's grim.This is supposed to be a character study. But there is no arc. Henry's robotic life is so monomaniacal as to preclude dramatic variation or change. What little substantive material there is could have been presented in thirty minutes.The film's pace is slow. Scenes are very, very drawn-out. Screen time is consumed with characters eating grim meals, playing cheap cards, and driving around in a rundown old car. It's as if the scene on page 62 of the script could have been switched with the scene on page 16, and viewers would never know the difference. It's all just an unending grim ... sameness.The film's images are grainy. Lighting is subdued. Music is appropriately eerie and creepy, but manipulative.Real-life serial killers are too diverse in backgrounds and personalities for this film to offer any generalized insight. And the film conveys little understanding of Lucas himself. Sometimes a film that is grim can be entertaining or insightful. This one isn't. It's just pointless.

*Spoiler Alert!* If this film was really supposed to be an example of an in-depth character study of a serial killer, then, as that study, it was utterly worthless 'cause Henry literally had no character to study. Nope. He sure didn't. He was completely void of any "character".And, with that in mind, just because Henry had a sick and diseased mind, did that have to mean that he had to be portrayed in such a way as to make him out to be a completely colourless, humourless and one-dimensional non-entity? Surely (just like everyone else) serial killers also have some notable character dynamics that could be called a "personality" (or a reasonable facsimile there of). But this wasn't the case with Henry. His personality was nil.I also found it rather puzzling that the approach in which Henry took to killing people was like that of one performing a totally hated job. I got the clear impression that killing someone was the most unfulfilling thing in the world for him, instead of it being the other way around.I cannot figure out why this serial-killer business seemed to be such a drudgery for Henry (and for me, as the viewer, as well). If killing people was Henry's "thing", his lust, his passion (and this seemed to be the case), then, why didn't this lust & passion show in his murderous actions? I would think that after each adrenaline rush of a fresh kill, Henry would have been absolutely elated like someone who's flying high on a powerful drug. But throughout the entire course of this film, Henry came across as being a complete and utter dullard who was not worth paying the least bit of attention to.And, to me, this whole argument about the insufferable dreariness of Henry and his murderous actions was this film's biggest and most damaging downfalls. It ultimately rendered this ugly, vicious and nasty film to the level of being one of the s-h-i-t-tiest "portraits" of anyone that I've ever seen.And, on top of all of the above, here are a number of other points about this pointless story that just about killed me to pieces - (1) Henry (who had already spent time in jail) wasn't in the least bit concerned about leaving tell-tale fingerprints, here, there, and everywhere, around each site of every single murder he committed. (Sheesh!) (2) Henry's amazingly deadly ability to snap a person's neck (thus instantly killing them) by applying the same effortless force that one might use to simply snap their fingers.(3) Never once, in the entirety of the story, was there any involvement, whatsoever, of a police alert and/or an investigation into this rash of sadistic murders. (Ho-hum!) (4) The clear fact that Henry was completely repulsed by sex yet a number of his female victims were found to be nude as though they had been raped.I certainly realize that Henry was no dummy (he managed to continue with his murderous activities indefinitely without any concern about being caught) - Yet, time and again, he behaved in such a blatantly stupid fashion which defied logic and common sense. Henry's actions, for the most part, defied the basic instinct for self-survival.All-in-all - This decidedly unpleasant movie about a brain-dead serial killer and his brain-dead friends and his brain-dead life (none of which I cared one bit about) gave me a serious case of brain-freeze right from the very first moment I was shown the first of Henry's many victims lying dead and naked (and seemingly posed just so) near a pond in some remote woods.On top of all of its stifled dialogue, its annoyingly wooden performances, and its recklessly seedy production values, Henry: Portrait Of a Serial Killer was nothing but a predictable paint-by-numbers picture whose intended shock-value completely missed its mark and inevitably failed to deliver much of a worthwhile jolt. It only aggravated and bored this viewer to pieces.So, there!