Serial killers are far from the most emotionally capable human beings alive, but in pop culture, some of them possess a certain aura that can allow the public to feel comfortable about their flaws. In “American Psycho,” Patrick Bateman pushes himself to conform to the most materialistic impulses of the 1980s; in “The House That Jack Built,” the film’s villain is creatively strained and acts as a substitute for its director Lars Von Trier’s neuroses. Due to their delusions, these characters can be hilarious, which turns the film’s toxic nature into something absurd yet palatable. 

David Fincher’s latest effort, “The Killer,” now in theaters and on Netflix on November 10, is based on a French graphic novel. Its protagonist is a serial killer whose mistakes end up creating a Sisyphus-esque existential crisis, in which, in his profession, he is no one and nobody at the same time.

It begins with the eponymous assassin, played by Michael Fassbender, going into excruciating detail about his methods. He waits for his target to appear in an empty WeWork office while listening to The Smiths and eating McDonald’s. Yet just as he seems prepared to take out his target, he misses, and things go from bad to worse. His home is invaded, and his partner is brutally attacked, meaning that the assassin has to look for the client who paid to kill him. All the characters here have no name, and anonymity is not simply a given, it’s the code. 

So far, what I’ve described about this story is far from original, but its appeal lies in Mr. Fincher’s brooding touches that make the final product seem more inventive than it should. As he is known for his perfectionism, it would be tempting to see “The Killer” as an allegory for Mr. Fincher’s career and the impact that his filmmaking had. Channeling much of his obsessions into Mr. Fassbender’s cold character and reuniting with Andrew Kevin Walker, who previously wrote the screenplay for “Seven,” Mr. Fincher reveals a lot more about the main character’s meticulous expectations he makes for himself weighed against the surroundings that disappoint him. 

Certainly, this carries over into the theme of decaying modern life that was apparent in “Fight Club” and “Gone Girl.” We see it through the  ironic product placements of WeWork and Amazon or the premise that the job of a precise assassin is more difficult than it looks when going through several layers of over-demanding management to get the closure you demand. It’s a lofty allegory that requires some work. 

With its lean and slow pacing, “The Killer” is certainly modeled by the works of Jean Pierre Melville, particularly “Le Samourai” and its hitman Jeff Costello, embodied by Alain Delon. This means many moments of well-earned tension, crafted through precise information being delivered in the narration, whether it’s Mr. Fassbender’s fight with the film’s Brute or the first scene in which Mr. Fassbender’s character listens to “How Soon is Now” while he attempts to carry out an assassination. The placement of many songs from The Smiths is an aspect of the film’s incredible sound design that could be credited as its greatest strength along with the film’s monochromatic color palette, saturated with green-yellow hues. 

In its substance, “The Killer” has more in common with Wes Anderson’s series of short films, particularly his latest work, “The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar.” Both have an overt narration that explains everything, boiled down to the most minute detail, and it is told like a literary piece, rather than a cinematic one. Mr. Fincher tells it in six different chapters, akin to the graphic novel, making the experience of watching the film feel more loosely connected than it should be. Yet one thing that is crucial to the film’s identity is its droll communication of so many of its ideas. It relies on the protagonist to use generic names, and then there’s his anal retention — “Forbid empathy. Stick to the plan.”

For Mr. Fassbender, whose performances in Steve McQueen’s films like “Hunger” and “Shame” were his most challenging, “The Killer” demands more from the mind because it is strictly about his character’s emotional turmoil that he chose by choice. The actor is not known for being a cerebral presence but rather for his meat and bones. Mr. Fassbender does the job decently enough by showing the weariness he experiences from pursuing greater workmanship. 

Yet because the film is so internalized with the character’s emptiness, it lowers the stakes by minimizing any possible threats made towards him. Mr. Fassbender is part and parcel of Mr. Fincher’s template: isolated and emasculated protagonists who become charismatic martyrs themselves. However, there is a limitation for an unreliable narrator, which is that avoidance of personality can be confused with complexity and ambiguity if the unnamed killer lacks any insight to keep the audience caring. Here, not knowing much of his motivations and his victims leaves a lot to be desired.   

Still, this character draws you in because Mr. Fincher allows enough ambition and command of mood to care. Clocking in at two hours, however, this effort from Mr. Fincher is his most straightforward and breeziest. It would have been better if it was more palatable about its ideas than being an abstraction.