David Fincher's serial killer chat 'em up MINDHUNTER

Zodiac: The Series?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gZCfRD_zWE

I'm down.

not familiar with much of the cast there except McCallany, who is pretty much always very good.

jesus god every time I think I'm at critical mass of shows to watch, Netflix just heaps another stack on top

new fincher show means they're finally starting phase 2 of netflix shows

lol "already been renewed for season 2" is possibly the biggest pile of marketing bullshit ever

finally, a look at the psychology of a serial killer

This is apparently based on or heavily influenced by the Ressler and Douglas books, right?

yeah it's an official adaptation

but the characters are fictionalised I assume

It's like MANHUNTER but in the MIND

I mean yeah the MIND OF A SERIAL KILLER stuff is sorta played out in the culture, but this isn't really that, or it is in a different kind of way. The beginning of real understanding of the pathologies that drove these guys, and the idea to interview the few in custody at the time, was extremely revolutionary in its day. I assume -- having read several books by both authors -- that that's what the series will concentrate on: the career risks and mental toll taken by these investigators by starting these projects.

I am a fan of Douglas (and of Douglas' mentor Robert Ressler who wrote Whoever Fights Monsters)

I actually met Douglas a few years back & got his autograph. He was pretty cool.

Looking forward to seeing this!!

Jonathan Groff is gr8 too

Wait this isn't parody?

nope

lol that's a bold choice of title if this isn't a zany spoof of Thomas Harris

It is based on the book Mind Hunter: Inside FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit written by Mark Olshaker and John E. Douglas

That clarification... does not affect the lol

it is still called MINDHUNTER

I'm guessing this (not very good) British comedy is on nobody's radar

http://empireonline.media/jpg/70/0/0/640/480/aspectfit/0/0/0/0/0/0/c/articles/58c908747c5c5bdd3ca6791b/Mindhorn%20poster.jpeg

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Harris never wrote anything called "Manhunter" anyway, Michael Mann did.

Harris's Jack Crawford character was partially based on Douglas, which is presumably why he semi-borrowed the title back off Mann for his book. It's a rich tapestry

Available on Netflix from today, really looking forward to this.

I'll reserve judgment until I finish the season but halfway in I will say Holt McCallany as Fred Ward is A+

pvmic i just finshed binging the whole thing

omg so good

I HAVE THOUGHTS

- I was skeptical that having Groff as Douglas’s substitute would mean Douglas would aggrandize himself & his achievements bc that’s the way he is, but he does not come off well by the end & i really like that, that really put it over the top for me

- the slow burn of neuroses between the three of them is fantastic, because a job like that cant not eat away at the very fabric of yr “self”

- casting of all the criminal subjects was incredible, and the actors were a+. from kemper to speck, not a bum note in any of them

- groff’s transition from ep 1 to ep 10, physically, emotionally, is SO good. anna torv is magical and i love her forever

love it

kinda want to watch it again? #saddo

oh and holt mccallany was grizzled tv cop PERFECT

3 eps to go here...

Veg said everything I was gonna say. Really enjoyed the hell out of this. The lead actors and the guys playing all the killers are all excellent.

I’m not hugely fascinated by serial killers themselves but I love the detecting and psychology angle so this was squarely in my wheelhouse. It felt like Zodiac: the Series in a lot of ways.

Ha I obviously didn’t see the post st the top of the thread

oh and holt mccallany was grizzled tv cop PERFECT

I'm only 2 eps in but man is it nice to see McCallany again. Lights Out was a fine little series.

don't think i've seen Groff play hetero before

that was a little weird at first, not gonna lie

I've really hardened my heart against this because I'm not much of a fan of Fincher, serial killer fic and stuff where the FBI are the good guys. But I suspect from what I'm reading it will probably win me over and become a mucho guilty pleasure watch.

how bloody/disturbing is this show

How violent/gory is this? The premise seems pretty bloodless, but are there reenactments or flashbacks or even just autopsies/ lots of photos?

ha xp

ha weird

basically I want to watch this (loved Zodiac) but my partner is an automatic no on serial killer shit, and I'm squeamish enough myself these days to not necessarily want to spend 10 hours marinating in murder naturalism.

99% of “gore” is crime scene photographs. there’s no dramatization of the murders themselves vis flashbacks or anything - the horrors are mostly communicated through conversation

there is one v shocking moment in ep1 that is quite gory but passes by v quickly

It’s not very gory overall. There is a scene in the first episode with some brief gore but it’s not serial killer-related.

Apart from that it’s mostly just crime scene photos and graphic verbal descriptions of crimes.

*LOTS* of ookiness and creepy shit though.

X-post

yeah, and the crime scene photos are not lingered upon & are faintly colored or black & white
often by the time you realize what you are seeing it’s already off camera

def not for the faint hearted but nowhere near the gorefest you might expect

fincher himself has described the show as mainly being about conversations & that def bears out

perfect, thanks!

One of my favorite bits was the looks Anna Torv kept shooting at Groff during their first meeting when he'd interject. Close up as he writes in notebook: "BOOK?"

enjoying this so far but Brandy is otm here

Fincher: this is Debbie, she's a real human woman
Me: lmaoooo oh for sure man

— BranDIE Jensen (@BrandyLJensen) October 15, 2017

on put more simply Debbie is basically the Cool Girl from the Gone Girl rant

Otherwise this has been v enjoyable

*quickly crosses off “looking for my Debbie (watch Mindhunter!!)” from my dating profile*

great we've established that this drama contains fictional characters

idk man some characters resemble types of people you find out there in the world, some are more like narrative devices with legs

Debbie’s introductory scenes are silly maybe but she didn’t strike me as unrealistic past that?

I've been re-watching Fringe so it's mildly amusing to see Anna Torv play a Boston-based FBI consultant. Am glad she's getting regular work again too.

I'm about two-thirds in and this is pretty good! And despite the dour subject matter, it's genuinely funny at points - that one killer who couldn't stop crying, the seat-switching scene in the airplane, Holt McCallany in general.

I meant the final BTK image; most of that stuff (except for the survivor you mention above) was partitioned off in the prologues. When they interviewed that survivor, I assumed that was going to be the beginning of a series of BTK episodes. But they veered off (or maybe it had already started, don't remember) into the Atlanta child murders, and that took over. Which was great--but there's still that frustration of leaving the other hanging.

That article points out it was too expensive a show for Netflix. For Netflix, the bottomless bucket of churn em outs.

What on earth about the show made it expensive!? It was standard shots, in standard locations, no cgi, no massive-name actors, no exotic locales?

Am I forgetting something razzy about the show, I havent seen it since it aired.

it had a bunch of cgi to make modern locations look old, much like Fincher did on Zodiac, right?

not across the board and we definitely noticed inconsistencies, BUT!

Oh good point yeah

the zodiac behind the scenes killed me, people think cgi means one thing but it really means “hey we don’t have soundstages and btw half of the background is *waves hands* and also we made the coke can he’s drinking from period accurate”

Yeah, that Zodiac behind the scenes was similarly eye opening as far as invisible CG. Though I’m sure Fincher probably pushes that thing harder than most, I have no doubt that show was expensive.

Bummer though, was some good TV.

Besides the invisible CGI, Fincher does tons of takes, which resulted in almost a year of filming for one season. Almost everything is shot on location and he himself commands a pretty high fee, so there's a lot of things that add up

It wasn’t cancelled for budget reasons, though, was it? Didn’t he just get bored and want to do other things, so eventually the actor contracts lapsed and it got canned?

Not sure whether the reason was his wanting a break or too high a budget back in 2020 but he just said in that interview that Netflix doesn't want to fund another season

I'm with James--the budget excuse just strikes me as a deflection from cast issues, and most of all Fincher turning his attention elsewhere.

(On the other hand, they'd reached a point where I can't see that they needed Fincher; Carl Franklin did a great job on the Atlanta murders and could easily have taken over if available.)

I’m assuming netflix just wouldn’t fund crap and he has a long schedule. What other commitments do the core cast have that? I love this show but….

I skipped a couple words but you get it

Started another re-watch for a future Zoom. Debbie, first episode: "Didn't I see you on Soul Train?"

I'm always kind of astonished at how much gets accomplished narratively in that first episode. It's a really deep and masterfully constructed hour.

Including how they get Tench in there sideways, standing in the wings listening to that one guy lecture.

The BTK story didn't seem so unresolved to me this time. I think somewhere on this thread I misremembered how it finished: BTK burning stuff ended S1, not S2. It's still odd how S2 starts like they're going full tilt on BTK and then (with a couple of quick, high-profile detours) switch over to Atlanta midway. I've never read an account of what exactly happened, but it does feel like Fincher got pulled away by Mank or whatever and handed everything over to Carl Franklin. He does an excellent job on Atlanta (returning the show to some striking musical cues, too), so they caught a break there. Anyway, this time it felt more like bringing BTK to a close would have been too pat; it ends like it probably should, with the unsettling reality that these people will always be out there, somewhere.

The one thing I think they inarguably let slip away is Carr.

My friend and I are down to nine more of these: a Zoomcast on the music in Mindhunter (mostly) and My Friend Dahmer (a little bit).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9H-lQe-8sk

Damn, this is great.

Watching S1E2, and, above all else, I’m just so happy that Holt McCallany got to play a role like this.

Sorry, I meant S1E5

I had no idea he'd been around for so long till I looked at his IMDB page. He's in one of my favourite movies, Casualties of War; must be a small part, not listed on the main cast page.

i got a little bit of my Mindhunter jones from the Apple series Black Bird, which is another true crime serial killer profiling-type story. Similarly not exploitative, the only violence onscreen is during a prison riot when it's visited upon some prisoners and a couple of vv unlucky guards. It's a bit more pulpy but I thought it was very good. It features one of Ray Liotta's final performances and he's tough to watch, knowing what happens IRL soon and how his character's body is also failing him. Taron Egerton is pretty exceptional in the lead role, Paul Walter Hauser even better as real-life killer Larry Hall.

yeah Black Bird was a+
Hauser was so good! i only knew him from comedy roles before that

Greg Kinnear, also good! His early scenes, interrogating Hall and faced with the inept local cops, were vv Mindhuntery.

yeah definitely!

Just watched a few of episodes of this. It's OK, but it's no "Zodiac," and knowing how perfect that movie is and how obsessive Fincher is about actors and period details and stuff I couldn't help but watch this and imagine him holding his nose when Netflix kept telling him this is a TV show with a limited budget and limited time for 100 takes and sometimes you just got to move on. I'm a little surprised by Groff's weird acting, and was wondering if he was doing an impression or just being ... weird. There's also a lot of on the nose stuff that felt pretty distracting, again, mostly because "Zodiac" sets a high bar. I suppose the surprising amount of sex in this is thematic, but at the same time, it also scans as the usual gratuitous "this ain't network TV" signifier.

Love McCallany, and whoever is playing Kemper. Wikipedia has a 2019 picture of Kemper, and it looks shockingly like McCallany! (Not going to post it here, because still creepy).

Agree Zodiac's better, but awfully high bar. There are a couple of videos on YouTube that have the real Kemper--interview footage--and the Mindhunter version side-by-side, and it's uncanny.

I'm pretty whatever about Zodiac and I don't know why, this (in contrast) is one of my favourite series and I'm sad it didn't get a third season.

I love reading about the real-life inspiration for Wendy Carr, (Ann Burgess, who is a nursing professor, not a psychologist), she seems extremely cool https://www.bc.edu/bc-web/sites/bc-magazine/bc-magazine-summer-2019-issue/features/mastermind.html

I prefer this to zodiac even though I really do love zodiac. it’s a genuinely unsettling show and a terrifying one, even though it does not depict a single act of violence, except for the very first scene in the first episode.

The three (I believe) episodes I saw were so queasily unbalanced in that regard - virtually no onscreen violence, lots of onscreen sex, lots of talk of sexual violence - that I imagine that effect was intentional, though as I said, still feeling a little on the nose and also a little gratuitous. A mix of show-don't-tell/tell-don't-show/show-and-tell.

I think like any of these shows its themes gather momentum as it goes on. I agree with everyone else - did a rewatch about two years ago and thought it was even better the second time. Wish they made more. It also looks amazing.

maybe this is just me but i never thought to compare them?

even though there’s obvious throughlines between the two it never occured to me to directly compare Zodiac with Mindhunter.

The skill of the Zodiac movie in its detail & storytelling & commitment to sources & victims is the reason i was confident that Mindhunter would be good

Zodiac the case is such a sprawling morass of endless threads leading to nowhere with no perpetrator & the movie is mainly led by character actors driving the plot

where Mindhunter is focused on crimes with endpoints AND perpetrators. Which makes for a very different animal storytelling wise, structurally etc

to me the main throughline or point of comparison is the effect these cases have on the people investigating them … and both are really successful at conveying that overall

i think the sex stuff in Mindhunter bears itself out by the end of the series …

and not to be sarcastic but Josh have you ever NOT confidently but wrongly summed up a show after 2 or 3 episodes LOL <3

re: period details, isn't there a making of where they show you how they obsessively cgi out loads of anachronistic modern-day detail that no-one would ever notice, like drop kerbs?

i thought season one was quite annoying, in a few ways but especially the murderer of the week

season two frankly incredible tbh

xpost There was this great one re: Zodiac:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xW2xhBSfFps

xxxpost to Veg: I didn't mean to convey or imply any confidence in my summation, lol. I'm not even sure it was a summation, just a description! I do find it wild that you never considered "Zodiac." Also Fincher, also '70s, also serial killer, similar look, etc. Like I said, I loved the Kemper scenes, but superficially at least I also kept thinking of the John Carroll Lynch interview scenes in "Zodiac."

VG's differences are all valid; I think one thing they share is this fascinating triangle at their core, Graysmith/Toschi/Avery vs. Ford/Tench/Carr. (Why I thought the second season tailed off a bit once they pushed Carr to the background.) Love this shot after they get their funding.

https://i.postimg.cc/28NKv17M/funding.jpg

you guys are going to make me watch this again

That's another thing they have in common: every time either thread is revived, I feel this compulsion to rewatch!

agree with omar & fgti that I actually preferred the show to zodiac -- it felt like he improved on the clarity depicting something that says something about the subject matter

i think the show is similar to Zodiac in the respect it's about the haunting unknowable, like maybe you can close a case but you'll never really "get it".

There's a movie with Rami Malek coming out, The Amateur, that I want to see primarily for Holt McCallany (Tench).

I watched the second Tom Cruise Reacher movie recently and seeing Holt in it made me reminisce about this wonderful show

also very good as Fritz Von Erich in The Iron Claw

i think the show is similar to Zodiac in the respect it's about the haunting unknowable, like maybe you can close a case but you'll never really "get it".

― omar little, Thursday, February 13, 2025 12:56 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

yeah when I say clarity I def dont mean about the cases themselves haha

i think what i appreciate about this show is its def not about the obsession of some dudes with finding a killer, but about this particular sickness permeating the culture, arguably getting into the territory of what's wrong with men, which would be maybe a bit of a tired concept if explicitly stated but it's more subtextual. the more obvious bits i actually do frequently like a lot though, the vv illuminating conversation Holden has in the bar with the visiting expert on this pathology was fascinating precisely because the characters are just talking it out, like they might IRL.

Bought this the other day:

https://i.postimg.cc/dtxmxfxw/shadow.jpg

I don't think it's the basis for Mindhunter--above the title there's a quote from John Douglas, author of Mindhunter--but there must be some connection.

Robert Ressler’s “Whoever Fights Monsters” would be my pick for direct inspiration imo - he was Douglas’s former partner (and v loose inspo for the character of Tench) they conducted the first series of interviews together at the BSU … and he helped create Vi-CAP (the book is more about Ressler than Douglas but thats mostly bc there’s beef between them & major egos lol)

anyway its a good read & highly recommend to anyone who dug the show