#jon amiel

[mabellonghetti]

Catherine Zeta-Jones in "Entrapment" (dir. Jon Amiel - 1999).

[lobbycards]

Copycat, US lobby card. 1995

[of-fear-and-love]

"Chess Demon" from Copycat (1995)

[farminglesbian]

Copycat (1995) Jon Amiel

[tiganas]

Stanley Tucci in The Core (2003)

[the1013file]

Copycats of Mulder and Scully in Copycat, by Jon Amiel (1995)

[haveyouseenthismovie-poll]

Have you seen Sommersby (1993)?

Yes

No

Haven’t even heard of this movie

Voting ended onJan 24, 2025

[watching-pictures-move]

Movie Review | Copycat (Amiel, 1995)

The MO of the killer in this movie is that he copies famous serial killers, like Albert DeSalvo, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy and Harry Connick Jr. Anyway, you see him mucking about with vintage computer graphics and then begin his crimes, but then the movie cuts away before he does anything. So there’s no need to worry. Anyway I’m being facetious but having watched Manhunter recently, it does occur to me that one of the things that one does well, and certainly The Silence of the Lambs does well too, is that you get an sense of the victims as people so that there is some weight to the murders. This one is firmly from the perspective of characters investigating the murders and occasionally from perspective of the murderer, so the killings do feel a bit like genre tropes, especially with the copycat gimmick, than something that really weighs on you as you watch.

Anyway, this is a ‘90s studio thriller so it’s got a stacked cast doing pretty good work. Sigourney Weaver has the juiciest role as the PhD in Serial Killing who has a nervous breakdown having been almost killed by Harry Connick Jr, so her character brings some baggage to the movie in a manner not unlike the trauma-centric horrors of recent years. One of the ways she gets across her character’s nerviness is that she sometimes leaves out pauses in between sentences, which is enough of a tic to get that quality across but not so much that it becomes distracting. She’s also helped by the cinematography by Laszlo Kovacs, which has some woozy handheld to heighten her anxiety attacks but in my opinion can be a little too kinetic in other moments.

The other key performance is Holly Hunter as the cop on the case, and there’s some of the same gender dynamics that you get with The Silence of the Lambs in how she deals with her superiors, although J.E. Freeman is a lot less supportive of her instincts than Scott Glenn in the other movie. Plus she fires a gun real good, and emphasizes to her partner Dermot Mulroney the importance of hitting the brachial nerve, something which pays off later in the movie. So there’s a literal Chekhov’s gun.

Plus you get a pretty juicy climax, and Harry Connick Jr. talking about his… “spirit”. So there are things to enjoy for fans of ‘90s thrillers.