There is a fantastic scene in the first half of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) where a young, pretty, broken bird of a co-worker attempts to commiserate with the titular Henry. She heard that he’s an ex-convict, and that what landed him in prison was matricide. 

When she asks him if it’s true, he gives a cagey “Yes.” 

She chooses the sympathetic route and wonders aloud to him that his mother must have been pretty terrible to him to cause that outcome. She then bears her own childhood trauma. 

The audience may expect him to reciprocate, and he does, but he fumbles the details. He begins his tale by confirming what she heard—he stabbed his mother to death. But by the time he reaches the conclusion of his tale, he shoots his mother to death. 

When the co-worker confronts Henry with this change in detail he states simply “Oh, yeah… That’s right…I stabbed her.” He’s either lying, stupid, or so closed-off to regular human emotion he doesn’t process it the way you or I would and he genuinely doesn’t recall. 

This scene underscores something that is unique when compared to how serial killers tend to be portrayed by the media. I want to suggest that the reason Henry is a winning film is precisely because it chooses to focus on an unimpressive man who happens to be a killer. 

Despite how much I love Zodiac (2007) the film perpetuates the “serial killers are geniuses” trope which is all too common in thriller/horror films. Although it might be said that Zodiac is unique because the characters are at the mercy of real events—and the fact there really was a persistent myth surrounding the Zodiac killer—it still participates in the building and maintaining of that same myth for the audience.

Henry does away with that impulse and the film is better for it. Not a single murder (there are many) is shown to the audience in a fancy or thrilling way. We witness murders of sex workers through car windows, we see the poorly planned and executed murder of a family through a fallen camcorder. 

I want to say it plainly: this serial killer is a loser. 

Yeah, maybe there are reasons. For example, we might conclude that his abuse stunted his growth. We as the audience come to understand that he didn’t attend school. Nevertheless, he is what he is. His intelligence doesn’t command respect, he’s not the best fighter—he would lose the one consequential struggle in the film if it weren’t for the help of someone else—and the most strategy he can string together is ensuring that he doesn’t kill with the same gun twice and avoiding the area for a month post-murder. 

Another smart choice that helps to emphasize director and co-writer John McNaughton’s vision for this film is not in the business of glamourizing this unimpressive killer’s mundane life is avoiding a police pursuit section of the plot. This means there’s no hyping up of the crimes and, as a result, no hyping up of Henry as the main character. 

A final, more general way the film serves its point is, unlike many famous serial killer films such as Silence of the Lambs or Se7en, you won’t find a star-making role here. The point of McNaughton’s writing and direction is not to have a character become a sandbox in which an actor can play. The point is the point of the film. That is its star. 

Henry strikes me as even more unique now than it may have been in 1986. Yes, it was seen as unique when it came out, and rated X, but that was due to the nudity and the blood and the brutally real deaths. 

In 2024, Henry is unique because we are in the midst of a decade-long true crime content boom and we are getting less, not more, of these films and their points.