In theory, the streaming revolution should be a miraculous prospect— unlimited access to all the movies and TV one could ever want, all for one small monthly payment. In practice, however, its rapid adoption has been more akin to a Trojan Horse, infiltrating our homes on a campaign of disruption that’s since been revealed to be one of full-on destruction. There are few winners here; not the studios, whose entire economic model was upended almost overnight; not the streamers themselves, locked into an unsustainable “churn and burn” cycle in the name of subscriber retention; certainly not audiences, subject to a devolving user experience and fickle content offerings. Indeed, it might be said that the only real winners are the creatives who found themselves in the right place at the right time, able to take advantage of this rudderless era of waste and excess to realize their long-gestating passion projects. Even then, these hard-won gains stand on unsteady ground— vulnerable to the fickle whims of platforms who’ve recently discovered that it can be more profitable to delete them entirely.

Long regarded as one of the early pioneers in cinema’s transition to digital technology, director David Fincher has commandeered the past decade’s industry tumult in his favor. His multi-year exclusivity deal with Netflix has been particularly beneficial, resulting in the critically acclaimed episodic series MINDHUNTER as well as 2020’s MANK— a feature-length passion project that the traditional studios refused to touch. Though that film may not have been received as well as Fincher had intended, he wasted little time in launching himself into yet another long-gestating labor of love. For the past 20 years, a steady trickle of trade headlines and movie blog articles detailed the baby steps Fincher was making with THE KILLER, an adaptation of a series of graphic novels by Alexis Nolent (1). The project initially began in the most traditional of ways, with Fincher setting up development at Paramount in league with Brad Pitt’s production company, Plan B. The pair had just come off the production of THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON (2008), but the prospect of a fourth collaboration would ultimately have to wait; Pitt felt the title role of a hitman with a monk complex was a touch too nihilistic for his tastes (1). For many years thereafter, the extent of THE KILLER’s development would rest in the script by Fincher’s SE7EN screenwriter, Andrew Kevin Walker. Fincher moved on to several other projects, obviously, his interest in THE KILLER gradually waning until a meeting with an enthusiastic and committed Michael Fassbender convinced him to finally tackle the project (1). The end result, released in 2023 in a limited awards-qualifying theatrical run before bowing on Netflix, finds Fincher working well within his wheelhouse— and delivering a taut action thriller marked by the cold surgical precision that has become his signature.

THE KILLER details the globetrotting misadventures of its titular protagonist as he embarks on a campaign of revenge against his employers. When a routine contract on a high-profile Parisian target goes south, The Killer retreats to his hideaway in the Dominican Republic, only to find his employers have beat him home— and beat his girlfriend within an inch of her life. Michael Fassbender proves an inspired choice, tapping into a latent reptilian charisma in order to convey a murderous monk driven by a cold, emotionless programming that prizes efficiency and minimizes waste. Every aspect is optimized… or at least, that’s what he tells himself via the frequently-ironic voiceover narration that plays more like a self-help book written by AI rather than a human being’s internal monologue.

As he hops around to New Orleans, then Florida, New York City, and ultimately Chicago, Fassbender’s Killer roots out the identities of his girlfriend’s attackers and then works his way up the so-called corporate hierarchy of the employers who wronged him. In the Big Easy, The Killer visits The Lawyer, played by Charles Parnell as a fearless and conceited man even when he’s staring down the barrel of his employee’s nail gun. In New York, the Killer tracks down Tilda Swinton’s bleach-blonde Expert, one of his girlfriend’s hired attackers. Like Fassbender, Swinton’s character is cold and cavalier in the face of death, resigning herself to a bottle of expensive whiskey as a kind of parting gift. Finally, the Killer tracks down The Client in Chicago, a hipster tech billionaire played by Arliss Howard in his third collaboration with Fincher after ALIEN 3 (1992) and MANK. Throughout, the film goes to great lengths to show that the business of killing is a messy one— the best laid plans can easily go awry, and very quickly, and all the efficiency and discipline in the world means nothing when you have something to lose.

As relatively simple as the plot may be, THE KILLER’s true resonance lies in using its story as a framework for Fincher’s wry commentary on the absurd ironies and idiosyncrasies of a modern society dominated by intrusive tech and corrupted capitalist priorities. The tech industry’s relentless push to “optimize” and streamline every facet of our lives is fundamentally, hilariously, at odds with human nature, and Fincher reinforces this sentiment with every creative choice. Reteaming with his Oscar-winning MANK cinematographer, Erik Messerschmidt, Fincher captures THE KILLER with the latest tech from his preferred camera vendor, Red Digital Cinema. Production would alternate between the two extreme poles of Red’s current market offerings, mixing footage from its “entry” level Komodo model as well as its topline V Raptor camera depending on the particular needs of the shot in question. It may seem counterintuitive to mix the respective 6K and 8K output from two very different sensors, but the filmmakers achieve visual unity by conforming their precise compositions into a 2.35:1 frame in post— a creative choice that also allows Fincher to sidestep the peripheral distortions of the anamorphic CinemaScope process with a suite of spherical Leitz Summilux-C and Fujinon Premiere lenses. The illusion is further sold via the addition of lens flares in post as a means to emulate the signature characteristics of traditional anamorphic photography (1), speaking to Fincher’s unique need to command and manipulate every pixel of his image with invisible effects in the pursuit of perfection.

Indeed, much of what constitutes Fincher’s signature aesthetic is achieved in post-production as opposed to what’s captured on set. Having once expressed a nagging disdain for the physical production process — defined as it is by compromise and human error — it’s not surprising that Fincher would prefer the comforts of the editorial suite, stocked with the tools and capabilities (and snacks) that indulge his artistic need for total control. Here, he can refine the deliberate color palette achieved on set by his returning production designer Donal Graham Burt into ever-more precise shades of yellow, blue, and green. The color red is kept to a strategic minimum, saved specifically for the occasional burst of bloodletting or the ominous dot of his sniper rifle’s targeting laser. THE KILLER roots out vibrant new shades within this spectrum, making for one of the more-colorful outings in Fincher’s canon. His signature style of camera movement — a creeping formalism that implies a kind of cold omniscience — fits quite appropriately with THE KILLER as a visual manifestation of its eponymous protagonist’s detached, calculating state of mind. When this atmosphere of optimized efficiency starts breaking down, however, we curiously see something we’ve seen very little of in Fincher’s work up to this point: handheld camerawork. Or rather, the suggestion that it was a hand holding the camera. This too is synthetic, artificially generated in post thanks to some serious computational acrobatics and the opportunities afforded by shooting in a higher resolution than what the final master requires. The effect is unsettling or uncanny in a manner we can’t quite place, assuming we didn’t previously know how it was achieved; much like how we see The Killer himself, we can tell something is “off”; not quite human, or maybe like an alien pretending to be human.

THE KILLER maintains this immersive interiority in almost every creative aspect, the signs of this approach becoming more evident the more one looks for them. That it can do so all while maintaining the air of objective omniscience that marks Fincher’s wider body of work is an impressive feat of narrative engineering. Take time, for instance: we tend to regard time as an objective force, measured in exact, consistent units. At the same time, we all experience time differently. Minutes can seem like hours. Years can fly by in the blink of an eye. When one’s job entails interminable periods of waiting around, only for the actual assigned task to occur in the space of milliseconds, the individual perception of time can be understandably fluid. THE KILLER explores this idea through the time-distorting capabilities of montage, carried out by Fincher’s longtime editor Kirk Baxter. Day becomes night in the span of a single splice, and those endless stagnant periods of inaction are capably compressed into quick vignettes without losing the impression of The Killer’s superhuman patience.

Fincher’s regular sound designer, Ren Klyce, and composing team Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross join forces to power THE KILLER with a muscular and aggressive soundtrack that speaks a little more forcefully to the interiority of Fincher’s image. Comprised of throbbing, gurgling electronic distortions and off-kilter rhythms, the score plays less like music and more like a sonic amplification of The Killer’s biological systems. In lieu of physical emotions from Fassbender himself, the score betrays the racing pulse and mounting anxiety of a man who increasingly finds himself at the limits of his control. The conflict is that of a professional maintaining his carefully-calibrated composure so critical to the success of his work and the emergent chaos of his natural human imperfections. One might think such a person would have no need for the frivolous distractions of music, but THE KILLER distinguishes the subdued eccentricity of its protagonist with the inclusion of needledrops from iconic New Wave band The Smiths. While the cliche tends to be that classical tunes are the music of choice of our favorite cinematic psychopaths (or Huey Lewis and the News, in the case of AMERICAN PSYCHO’s Patrick Bateman), THE KILLER’s incessant rotation of The Smiths’ greatest hits speaks to the latent sensitivity and suppressed eccentricity of its titular character. The upbeat melancholy that distinguishes the band’s sound suggests a genuine appreciation for life from a man professionally dedicated to snuffing it out. Fincher’s original plan called for a wider selection of New Wave bands like Joy Division and Siouxsie and the Banshees, but Reznor advocated for the narrow focus on The Smiths (1); the tangle of licensing rights notwithstanding, Reznor would argue that using multiple bands would muddle the impression of The Killer’s singular focus. Indeed, the only instances in which the music deviates from The Smiths are defined by their relation to external characters— the most prominent episode arguably being the inclusion of Portishead’s “Glory Box”, which booms ominously over the loudspeakers in The Killer’s ransacked tropical hideaway as an oblique acknowledgment of his injured partner.

Watching the finished product, it’s immediately apparent why THE KILLER captivated Fincher’s creative fascinations for nearly two decades. The material speaks directly to his artistic signatures, or provides ample opportunity for their deliberate inclusion. The casual viewer will find a tightly-paced, brooding action film that rarely deviates focus from its central story engine of revenge. Dig a little deeper beyond its stoic facade and icy, unblinking gaze, however, and one will find a sprawling internalized meditation on technology’s total domination over modern life. Fincher’s extensive background in commercials, combined with his appreciation for dark humor and irony, allows him to co-opt the visual language of advertising and subvert it towards bitingly satirical ends. Prior films like FIGHT CLUB and GONE GIRL made hay with their inclusion of brand signage and product placement as a means to explore the influence of commercialism and materialism in their respective stories, but THE KILLER embraces this thematic potential even further. At several points throughout The Killer’s detached voiceover narration — characterized by empty, self-help-adjacent platitudes — Fincher punctures his protagonist’s self-seriousness with ironic visual counterpoints. Fassbender’s emotionless tone describes his person as a man with no country, who flies no flag, but the sentiment loses its bite when we see him order supplies and pick them up from an Amazon locker. In removing the necessity of having a home or apartment to which goods and products can be delivered, Amazon has effectively blurred the hard lines on all of our flags. Indeed, the era of globalism and digital communication has effectively erased the physical boundaries of borders, making us all citizens of the world in a manner of speaking. The Killer isn’t that special, despite what he may have you believe.

Fincher’s careerlong interest in technology further bolsters THE KILLER’s exploration towards this end, with Fassbender’s character using his smartphone and a Fitbit as an extension of his own body rather than a separate device. During the extended opening sequence, structured as something of Fincher’s riff on Alfred Hitchcock’s REAR WINDOW (1954), we see how The Killer relies on his Fitbit to monitor his heart rate— the accuracy of his marksmanship depends on his heart rate remaining under a certain number, which effectively gamifies his job. Fincher reinforces contemporary technology’s intrusion into every aspect of our lives by overlaying user interfaces directly onto the image. His work on HOUSE OF CARDS pioneered this approach, superimposing chat bubbles over scenes of characters trading text messages (rather than cutting away to an insert angle on the phone itself). This particular technique has since been adopted as something of the grammatical standard for the medium, helping to add visual interest to an otherwise uncinematic activity that’s nonetheless become a necessity in detailing person-to-person interactions in contemporaneous narratives. THE KILLER builds on this emerging visual language by showcasing the wider applications and capabilities of an internet-connected smartphone like Google searches and Amazon shopping.

No matter where he is in the world, THE KILLER’s eponymous antihero moves through environments dominated by the ubiquity of billion-dollar brands. He fashions a makeshift sniper’s nest out of an under-construction WeWork office. He stakes out a target while parked next to a giant Pepsi-Cola billboard. He poses as a FedEx driver to gain access to his employer’s office. Pockets of voice-over narration extoll the convenience and utilitarian nutritional value of a McDonalds hamburger or the carelessness of Postmates drivers who inadvertently allow him to circumvent ground-floor security measures and gain access to high-value targets. AirBnb… Starbucks… THE KILLER is awash in the signage of global commerce. Maybe the most damning touch of all: the corrupt billionaire at the heart of this revenge campaign is seen wearing a t-shirt that bears the Sub Pop logo, that treasured record label behind some of the biggest bands in the alternative/indie scene. Together with the omnipresence of The Smiths on the soundtrack, this little touch further suggests the overwhelming extent to which massive corporations have co-opted our culture. 

That a filmmaker known for punk affectations and iconography within his work would choose a punk-adjacent genre like New Wave for this purpose should not go unacknowledged; indeed, it strikes to the very heart of Fincher’s unique voice, and his prerogative of telling stories about people raging against the machine. With THE KILLER in particular, Fincher seems to be saying that even this — the countercultural rebellion, the kneejerk nihilism of people who’ve convinced themselves they can see through the corporate bullshit — is carefully engineered and guided along by the capitalistic crusade for profit. After all, Hot Topic is owned by the same private equity investment firm that owns Talbots and Staples. The counterculture is just another market segment to sell to; to exploit in the pursuit of an ever-plumper bottom line. Without giving anything anyway, THE KILLER’s climax hammers home this bleak irony with its decision to spare a certain target. The house always wins, and this bleak final flourish is the merciless coup-de-grace in Fincher’s subtextual interrogation of capitalism’s unchecked influence in all of this. THE KILLER is an apt title, but it very well could have been MURDER, INCORPORATED. 

One of the key reasons that Fincher signed an exclusivity deal with Netflix is the opportunity provided for creative experimentation. Most of Fincher’s work is aesthetically disciplined, calibrated to his characteristic precision. THE KILLER, like the nostalgic monochrome of MANK before it, speaks to his newfound desire to explore new avenues of visual expression. One gets an uncanny feeling watching the film— almost as if this might be AI’s approximation of a Fincher film. There’s an intangible cheapness to the picture, but at the same time it also feels more free; more playful because of it. Look no further than the protagonist’s use of old sitcom character names as his travel aliases, which Fincher sprinkles throughout as a light touch reinforcing the meta-commentary giving his otherwise bare-bones plot its nutritional value. This minimizing of plot mechanics allows for a relentless propulsiveness, facilitating the story to surge forward with the same single-mindedness that marks Fassbender’s character. There’s no B story or subplots here, just the constant drive to neutralize and annihilate under the oblivious nose of everyday society. Fincher’s opening credits, usually a prime opportunity for Fincher to articulate his films’ central ideas through indulgent visual expression, further reinforce THE KILLER’s single-mindedness. They scream past the Netflix logo like a gunshot, letting the credits remain on screen just as long as it takes to read and process before moving on to the next, all while cycling through fetishized images showcasing the tools of the hitman trade. The whole thing is over in maybe twenty seconds; dispensed with as quickly and judiciously as a hitman’s target.

Fincher’s artistic pedigree and the film’s positioning as a potential awards contender goes a long way in helping THE KILLER to avoid (or at least delay) the ignoble fate of most Netflix Originals. Whereas most of them debut directly on the platform, enjoying a brief weekend of attention before scuttling off into the algorithmic abyss of their endless other content offerings, THE KILLER would first premiere at the prestigious Venice International Film Festival ahead of a (very) limited theatrical run. This ensured the biggest possible cultural footprint for Fincher’s latest feature, which in and of itself was always poised to command eyeballs thanks to its director’s cultural standing and rabid fan base. Though its awards ambitions would ultimately go unrealized, THE KILLER enjoyed a surge of critical praise; The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw called it a “horribly addictive samurai procedural, a ballet of anonymous professionalism” (2). Of course, Netflix being Netflix, there’s an impenetrable veil of secrecy around its performance; if it appears on their internal Top 10 lists, we just have to take their word for it. Box office numbers are irrelevant; its theatrical run merely serving as a loss leader driving eyeballs to Netflix’s paid platform. A few months out from its release, THE KILLER is now just another tile in the user interface, with each passing weekend shuffling said tile ever deeper into an endless pile of tiles; burying our collective awareness of the film in the ceaseless crusade against subscriber churn. Indeed, THE KILLER’s cultural footprint is heavily dependent on Fincher’s own, its relevance inescapably tied to the continued value of his wider filmography. That said, this peculiar arrangement seems to be working; Fincher’s deal was recently renewed for several more years. 

The only question that remains is whether or not we, as the beneficiaries of his superlative creativity, can accept this tradeoff. Can we allow Fincher’s creativity to flourish without restriction at the expense of the theatrical gravitas his legacy demands? This author would argue that artistic growth is an objective good; it’s our own problem if we don’t like the outcome. It doesn’t evidence a filmmaker losing touch or experiencing artistic degradation so much as it confirms our unwillingness to let an artist operate outside of the narrow set of parameters we’ve unfairly imposed upon them. For his part, Fincher has never been one to sit back and let others dictate what he wants to say. His desire to increase his output and diversify his aesthetic is not some temporary deviation we must endure, but rather the logical outcome of everything he’s been building to since those turbulent days on the set of ALIEN 3. As long as his partnership with Netflix stands — and as long as Netflix is willing to supply the resources he demands —Fincher can further his craft without compromise. He can remain above the fray of a risk-averse studio system caught up in a doom loop of its own making, continually pushing the limits of his control in a way most commercial filmmakers dare to dream of.

THE KILLER is currently available as a Ultra HD stream via Netflix.

Credits:

Written by: Andrew Kevin Walker

Produced by: Céan Chaffin, William Doyle, Peter Mavromates

Director of Photography: Erik Messerschmidt

Production Designer: Donald Graham Burt

Edited by: Kirk Baxter

Sound Design: Ren Klyce

Music by: Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross 

References:

1. IMDB Trivia Page

2. Via Wikipedia: Bradshaw, Peter (September 3, 2023). “The Killer review – terrific David Fincher thriller about a philosophising hitman”. The Guardian. Archived from the original on September 3, 2023. Retrieved September 3, 2023.