[Tribeca 2024] THE SHALLOW TALE OF A WRITER WHO DECIDED TO WRITE ABOUT A SERIAL KILLER -- Fun Title, Mediocre Movie

Review by Daniel Lima

No one knew how to name a movie like Italians in the 1970’s. The Red Queen Kills Seven Times. Hey Amigo! A Toast to Your Death. Watch Me When I Kill. No matter how middling the movie, it was often accompanied by a distinct and evocative title that promised intrigue and danger. In that way, The Shallow Tale of a Writer Who Decided to Write About a Serial Killer is something of a spiritual successor. Unfortunately, it also shares something else with those earlier films: it does not deliver on that promise.

John Magaro plays the titular writer, who has been working on his second book for years with no end in sight. His literary agent has become disinterested in him, his marriage is on the rocks, and he can do no more than lamely explain to anyone who will listen how his novel is about the last Neanderthal. It’s at this low point of his life that a stranger approaches him with an offer: write a story based on the stranger’s former life as a serial killer. When Magaro’s wife finds the stranger in her home, the two pretend he is a marriage counselor, setting up an interesting dynamic that does not ever pay off. ​

The premise sounds like ample ground for some black comedy hijinks or the setup to a dark comparison between relationships between romantic partners and those formed by murderers and their victims. While there is a paltry attempt to do this, the film takes so long to set up this state of affairs that there’s little runway to make the most of the conceit. The Shallow Tale is never more fun than in its last third, as characters begin to grow suspicious of one another and flimsy plots begin to spiral out of control, but by that point, it is too little too late. The journey to get there sorely lacked the energy of the finale, and the best part of the movie is over as quickly as it began.

The three leads — Magaro, Britt Lower as his wife, and Steve Buscemi as the retired serial killer — all commit to their performances, and every laugh the film earns is more on their shoulders than on the limp material they are given. The comic rhythm and sensibility of the film never seem quite right, going from droll and dry to absurdist to meta and ironic at the drop of a hat. This lack of consistency gives the film an unevenness that feels less like “anything can happen” and more like “there is no coherent vision for what this story actually is.” Considering the uneven pace of the narrative as a whole, this appears to be the case.

It’s impossible to watch this and not think about the recently released Hit Man. That film is similarly a riff on mystery and crime stories that incorporates romance into genre thrills and vacillates in tone. Those are where the similarities end: that movie has a clear thesis, has a deliberate build in how absurd the comedy is, and knowingly wrings as much as it can from its premise. Of course, that is a film from Richard Linklater, an artist who has been making films for decades, whereas The Shallow Tale of a Writer Who Decided to Write About a Serial Killer is the English-language debut of a comparatively young filmmaker. Hopefully, Tolga Karacelik will learn from the missteps of this shallow tale going forward.

The Shallow Tale of a Writer Who Decided to Write About a Serial Killer premiered at the 2024 Tribeca Festival, which ran from June 5-16 in New York City.

Rating: 2.5/5