Just perfect...

Excellent but underrated film

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

A well made true life murder movie tragedy. This Lifetime movie about the Craigslist killer is well cast and well acted with a likable cast. The screenplay is well written and shows what you want to see. The story is so interesting that the movie is fascinating to watch.Jake McDorman looks suitably wholesome as the medical student with a dark side who had a promising future. The escalation of his obsession is frightening to watch. Agnes Bruckner is quite good as the girlfriend who had no idea she was living with a killer.The needless self destruction and insane obsession that led to killing is quite tragic.Worth a watch.

Made for TV films used to be a standard thing on Television. Every Sunday night you could catch a rather typical but entertaining film about spousal abuse or kidnappings or serial killers. Now films like that are almost exclusively saved for 'Lifetime' or 'AMC' or other cable networks. The Craigslist Killer attempts to tell a true crime story within a small budget and still entertain and tell a real story that happened. It is entertaining and it is decently made but the small budget shows and the performances are just alright making this decent but quite obviously slapped together in many ways.The film does really revolve and rely on the performance of Jake McDorman who plays medical student and killer Philip Markoff. His performance is okay but it is also rather cheesy at times and laughable when it should be serious and really twisted. He sort of lets down. Agnes Bruckner gives a much better performance as the completely oblivious girlfriend/fiancée. Her performance makes you feel for her and really understand her character. The supporting cast are passable but really add nothing that stands out including that of William Baldwin who is probably the most recognizable name in the film.As I said the movie is passable and watchable and reasonably entertaining. It certainly tells the story well enough and gets all the points across. I suppose the only downfall is that it is in the made for TV mentality which makes it that much less impressive that the current age of big screen thrillers. Still for a TV movie it is watchable. Director Stephen Kay is a TV director and he plays by the book. Tell the story, deal with the actors given. True crime fans will enjoy it. 6/10

From a guy's perspective watching a predominantly-female-cable-channel's movie, I thought the movie was only OK. First, it's a TV movie; there were scenes that could have been riskier if they were made for a theater, but here they just seem like tame "problems" rather than gruesome killings. Second, the actors did not seem like the types that would do anything close to killing anyone else, nor even being interested in Craigslist, especially Jake McDorman. Third, where's the motive or the intrigue behind the 'Philip' character? He tries to explain why during the end of the movie, but it doesn't stick or make sense. Why was he getting woozy during an engagement party? Why is his fiancé so gullible? And who leaves their engagement ring at a jail visiting center? The beginning, as mentioned in other reviews, is very slow and could've been abbreviated to fit more murders or motives in its place. The music is generic and forgettable.I honestly didn't feel anything (trust or shame) for this character in the movie, so the movie feels pretty worthless. And trying to add that whole "Pocket" business would make me furious if I were a female trying to be sold this idea that he really loved her completely. This movie = totally dramatic sham. Go watch American Psycho if you want to see a person with real issues.

I haven't seen any other 2011 movies yet, because I just haven't wanted to, but I really enjoyed this movie, despite it being a lifetime movie.I didn't really know much about the Craiglist Killer, but I was interested, so I decided to watch the movie on Free Movies OnDemand.The director and writer made the movie so it wasn't disturbing, but you got the message very quickly about what's going on, which is what it needed to be (especially for a lifetime movie).I usually don't watch many TV movies, although I've really liked the ones I have seen, Dinner With Friends, The Ron Clark Story to name a few. And this one makes my list of good TV movies.The acting was good, the writing was okay, the direction was as good as it could have been.Will I watch it again? Maybe, but I don't think that's what the movies intent was, it wasn't meant to be re-watched over and over again, and that's good enough for me.