Serial: Amoral Uprising
Starring: Christopher Howell, Cole Ivelia-Sumner, Kymberly Harris, Wayne Dial
Written & Directed By: K.M. Jamison
Grade: B+

Serial: Amoral Uprising depicts the trauma and awakening of serial killer, Trenton Bracks (Howell). Right from the start the film states that this is a fictional account rather than trying to claim it’s “based on a true story” to try and make it scarier. Even though it’s a fictional account, it still resonates in a certain element of reality, taking it’s inspiration from several notable serial killers and creating an appalling yet completely enthralling character.

The film first gives us a glimpse at Trenton’s murderous nature then backtracks things, taking us back to his traumatic childhood. Trenton’s mother hated her son and didn’t mind telling him so in the cruelest fashion. She takes out all of her anger on him, belittles him, and it doesn’t take long for her threats to become a vicious reality.

Trenton’s father is still skeptical about his son’s activities, but tries to push him in the right direction. He is much more kind and understanding, apologizing for his mother but not taking any real action until it’s too late. Any chance of sanity Trenton had died that night, all of those issues messing with his mind, and transforming him in to a serial killer.

Trenton seems very appealing on the outside; polite, charismatic, and “a real lady killer” (You got to love that pun!). He lures girls in with his charms then rapes and/or murders them, venting his past suffering out on females, in attempts to deal with what his mother did to him and their family. Trenton doesn’t hold back at all, murdering in the most vicious and cold way possible. Seeing the three versions of Trenton; the young innocent boy, the charming catch, and the brutal killer, make for quite an interesting character piece. We see how the killer was born and all of the different faces he wears to the world.

Serial: Amoral Uprising has a lot to offer through character and story, but it does a lot with its low budget as it stands out stylistically as well. This comes out the most through the death scenes; dark, moody, and bloody. Trenton is aggressive yet distant, becoming a completely different man once he turns on these women. There’s a lot of black outs and flashes, but rather than seeming like a cheat, to try to startle the audience rather than showing them the dirty deed itself, it seemed genuine, building the tension and translating the hectic state that his victims are in. One scene in particular that follows this, has thunder and lightning, flashing between the darkness and the gory murder scene before us, with a high-paced heartbeat sound effect, adding the tension. Jamison gives us a lot of handheld shots, showing us only portions of the morbid death taking place, almost teasing us. We want to see more and really have it all revealed to us, yet at the same time it puts us in this disjointed state, not having full consciousness of the death. Through this technique combined with all of the stages and personalities we see from Trenton’s point of view, Serial: Amoral Uprising makes the viewer experience the victim’s tragic demise while sympathizing and idolizing the murderer at the same time.

The pacing was pretty good, although I would have liked things to have been gone in to a little deeper, especially that transition stage, where Trenton’s mind is really at, and exploration of where that urge to kill lies. The childhood scenes are deeply disturbing, making it difficult to watch as you are simply terrified for this boy. Beyond this there are some great death scenes, morbid stylizations, and a haunting character depiction. Still, when it was over I wanted more. The film has a running time of 55 minutes, that extra half hour could go through so much more exploration that the film proved it had the potential to produce. Luckily, the full feature of Serial is in the works, one that I will be eagerly waiting, to really get in to the tortured mind of Trenton Bracks.