Psycho Killers and Inner Demons Converge

The alphanumerically titled thriller “Thr3e,” from director Robby Henson and screenwriter Alan B. McElroy, is the inaugural release for FoxFaith, a new distribution label at 20th Century Fox devoted to Christian audiences. In this scrubbed version of a shopworn subgenre, a would-be victim and one tough cop piece together a psychotic killer’s puzzles, but without the aid of gore, nudity, or potty mouth.Also expurgated are logic, continuity, and suspense, but the filmmakers’ dedication to regular explosions is unimpeachable. Chekhov’s dictum about a gun introduced in the first act being discharged by the third gets a generous reinterpretation. By the time the requisite surprising conclusion rolls around, a bus, a warehouse, a refrigerator, someone’s brother, and a doghouse have all appeared only to burst into balls of fire at appropriate lulls.The rickety movie, adapted from the novel by Christian-market author Ted Dekker, centers on a troubled seminary student, Kevin (Marc Blucas), who lives in a sweet loft. A stringy-haired nutcase (Bill Moseley) is tormenting him, demanding a confession for some sin in his past. Known as Slater, this possible serial killer has already blown up the brother of a husky-voiced police detective/psychologist, Jennifer Peters (Justine Widdell), over perceived insults to his technique.Jennifer and Kevin’s childhood chum Samantha (Laura Jordan) aids our hero in his quest not to be detonated as well. Flashbacks (sometimes three in a row) and Scripturally-based taunts from Slater point to some unforgiven grievance from Kevin’s youth. Precipitously but with the full support of the screenplay, Kevin decides that Slater must be a bully from the ambiguously located suburban neighborhood of his youth. He recalls a fight in a derelict building, where he abandoned the ruffian in a dank, locked room to die.“Thr3e” is more interested in psychoanalyzing Kevin than the killer, and per the didactic undercurrent to much Christian fiction, he is a lost soul searching for answers. He’s studied English literature, engineering, and now theology. (“A professional student,” Jennifer murmurs.) Orphaned young, Kevin was raised by an imperious aunt, a loony played by “Three’s Company ” roomie Priscilla Barnes who dresses like a princess.With Mr. Moseley, Ms. Barnes makes for two alums of “The Devil’s Rejects,” the 2005 slasher flick directed by White Zombie frontman Rob Zombie (and the only, meager highlight in a universally bland and clean-cut cast). Her regrettable, feebleminded family, with a little work, could have been backwoods freaks in that movie: She confines a fez-wearing husband and retarded bowl-cut son to a house cluttered in the tradition of the Collyer Brothers. How crazy is that?Not as crazy as Kevin, more scarred than we know by his upbringing. Slater’s taunts pose too much strain for this doctoral student who stopped writing his thesis on good and evil because of (no kidding) writer’s block. The isolation in Kevin’s childhood emerges as the key to the movie, but the filmmakers botch the delivery of their twist by trying to be even more clever.The ending also boldfaces the spiritual themes that non-Christian viewers might understandably have written off as suspense-thriller riddling. Serial-killer characters since Hannibal Lecter have traded on their architectonic schemes and murders as a kind of soulless art, which we the viewers allow to titillate us. But in “Thr3e,” perversity is unambiguously attributed to a struggle over sin undertaken without God’s guidance — an endeavor portrayed as foolhardy and fatal.Whatever the reason, “Thr3e” is never allowed to get very thrilling. Perhaps parent studio Fox was distracted by the prospect of feeding cheap, recognizable product to an undertapped market. You can’t fault Fox’s undiscriminating nose for business: The studio that welcomed millions to Borat’s duping an evangelical service will soon distribute another movie adaptation of a Dekker novel (“House”).One hopes that the next attempt at least omits dialogue that calls attention to the movie’s mediocrity: “There’s no reason for us to go into the building,” Kevin says outside the warehouse. “It’ll blow up!” As always, the ultimate loser is the viewer, stuck watching B-movie dreck, with the seams for TV rebroadcast already showing.

Psycho Killers and Inner Demons Converge

More from the New York Sun

Exclusive: FBI Staffers Fired for Role in Mar-a-Lago Probe Were Assigned to Espionage Unit That Investigated Iranian Threats in America, Sources Say

Magic of Mummies Is Resurrected at Brooklyn Museum

Transatlantic Divide: Epstein Files Take Heads of Europe’s Elite While America’s Hold Firm

Trump Says Iran Attacks Running Ahead of Schedule

Reported Ban of Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie From Royal Box at Prestigious Ascot Race Points to Deepening Epstein Crisis for Windsors

‘As Far as We Need To Go’: Hegseth Says More American Forces Being Deployed as Attacks on Iran Escalate

Welcome to Washington: Upcoming Midterm Cycle Will Be the Ugliest, for Both Parties, Since the Tea Party Wave

1973 Sci-Fi Film ‘Westworld’ Pioneered Digital Effects — and Warned Us About AI