Conceptual portraitist Cindy Sherman made her directorial debut (and only narrative film to date) with 'Office Killer' (1997). Sherman in her work has continually sought to challenge and raise important questions about the role and representation of women in society and media. It is interesting that she has stated a major influence in her film is Dario Argento, who has a negative reputation so far as his portrayal of women is concerned. Sherman tells the tale of 'Doreen Douglas,' a plain and unassuming office worker. During a period of economic rationalization she is forced to work from home, in more ways than one. Doreen cares for her mother at home (she was accidentally responsible for her father's death), and is at work is the kind of longtime employee who often ends up being relegated to menial tasks (by virtue of her being the only one able to do them). A tsunami of office infighting is happening resulting in nobody liking each other very much; and they're all coming down with the flu. When Doreen accidentally kills a male co-worker while putting in overtime at the office, she stumbles headlong into murder as empowerment tool. Before long, the magazine is understaffed and Doreen has a basement full of corpses with their rotting fingers taped to their keyboards. While a failure as the satire it was meant to be, 'Office Killer' demonstrates the impact of Argento's work on horror cinema generally, and interestingly here on feminist cinema. In addition to traumatic childhood flashbacks we have a roll call of Argento stylistic influences with the primary colours, tracking shots, asymmetrical framing, dark shadows, foregrounding of objects, empty buildings after dark… and of course the pussycats.

This movie is strangely entertaining, I don't really know why. The story isn't anything special, it's just the old concept where a harmless person becomes murderous for really vague reasons. Our office killer kills someone by accident, and that somehow makes her start killing people on purpose. Very well, I'll take it. So we get to see her murder a bunch of people, just one after the other, and it's well, there is no right adjective. It's not funny because people are dying gory deaths, it's not shocking because well, look at this thing, but it is pretty good. I believe it's kind of a tongue-in-cheek kind of thing, and I believe it's working. Carol Kane also plays her role very well, helped by the screenplay that's gradually making her character meaner. At one point she encounters some girl scouts selling cookies. What follows is just not cool. Well, maybe a little. I'm also really digging this ending. Either way, this is essentially following a formula, but there's still some creativity involved here and there and I appreciate that.

The first question that would come to mind would be whether Carol Kane could play a psycho successfully. And after seeing this film, I would have to say I still don't know because the very tame screenplay didn't allow her to be a well developed psychotic, nor did it allow any other sort of development for any other aspect of this film.The storyline here is very typical. It involves Carol Kane (with very odd penciled in eyebrows) as an awkwardly mousy, hardworking magazine editor in a drab and depressing looking office building where she gets picked on daily. Then, without any time wasted, the inevitable psycho switch gets flipped and she starts killing off her coworkers.I know that may sound to most like your typical fun slasher, but in fact, it can't even be considered a slasher. Actually, I really don't know what genre to categorize this film in because it dips it's toes in a couple different sub-genres without ever fully concentrating on any one area, therein lying the problem. The resulting film just doesn't quite work. At the start, it seemed to be heading into satire territory with office politics and such, but quickly falls flat because of a major lack of humor. As it went on, it then seemed I was in for a slasher, but all of the murders take place off screen, giving us no chase sequences, creative deaths or gore. Then I expected it to take a turn into suspense, but was left with no tension or any sort of character development whatsoever, so I never cared for anyone or anything enough to ever get involved in the storyline. The writers just didn't seem to know what they really wanted, which kind of left the final product in limbo. And it's pretty disappointing because the photographer turned director, Cindy Sherman, seemed to have talent and would have benefited greatly if it were a straight up thriller.So what were we meant to feel during this film? It wasn't smart, funny, thrilling or even bloody. Were we supposed to hate and fear Kane? Or were we supposed to root for her? The whole film felt just as awkward as she looked and felt just as drab and boring as the office building looked, which leaves us with no reason to ever want to visit. I would compare this to later films, such as Love Object and the Willard remake, both of which used the same plot techniques, yet executed them in a much more entertaining fashion. Office Killer isn't a terrible film. I give the director and cast credit for trying. But it's just so lifeless that I can't recommend you wasting your time with it.

One day, my friends and I wanted to watch a "thriller" or something similar, and we rented "Office Killer". Big mistake. This movie is anything but scary. It's a bit gory and disgusting, yes, but it's mainly HILARIOUS!, and not in the parts that are supposed to be funny! (The "I don't care!" line kept us laughing for days!) you cannot take it seriously for one second! It's the kind of movie you can make fun of. The performances are ok, as well as the direction, but the special FX makes you wanna cry, or laugh, as in my case. What is that blood made of? ***POSSIBLE SPOILER*** And at the end when the house burns down? It looks like they lit a match between the camera and a picture of the house. Come on, you people, I've seen better FX's in class B movies from the 50's.***END SPOILER*** A small budget is not an excuse, it's a matter of imagination, the corpses and guts were ok. Something else: the characters were underdeveloped. You don't care about them one bit. Go and get them!, kill them all! Who cares? To summarize, this movie has: good actors (what happened to you, guys? you have talent!), average performances, average direction, bad special effects and a lame plot: it makes you feel you are watching a parody or something like that. A bad movie that could have been good. My advice is: go and rent Se7en or Scream, never mind if you already saw them.I give it 4 out of 10.