Movies based on the exploits of real life serial killers tend to bug me these days. I get the fascination concerning a person committing horrific acts while somehow living a dual day to day life – but aside from the fact that it gives publicity an fame to people who frankly don’t deserve it, the genre has been playing catch up ever since John McNaughton unleashed Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer back in 1986. But while serial killers loosely based on the real deal are fine in my book (Leatherface, Norman Bates, Buffalo Bill), the prospect of sitting through an actual true story doesn’t really appeal much to me at all.
So you could argue that No Tears In Hell has something of an uphill climb before it even started, but can this telling of the gruesome story of the man ultimately known as the Siberian Ripper manage to rise above the usual issues that tends to blight such films, or will it be as relentlessly broody and torture porn-y as 99% of all real-life slasher ever made?
As the homeless epidemic spread across the city where he lives, Alex views the cold and hungry street children as an unwanted byproduct of the democracy that is emerging across the country. Hating them, he decides that he should probably do his civic duty and bring the homeless numbers down somehow, but while some would join some outreach program or try to figure out some sort of way to cure the social pressure, Alex takes a more direct route that befits his sketchy mental health record. That’s right, Alex’s big plan is to lure unsuspecting homeless people to his house and then kill, butcher and ultimately eat them in order to not only do his bit for the community, but to ensure that he doesn’t go hungry himself.
One of the reasons that Alex manages to do what he does and remain undetected is that his accomplice in his grisly mission is none other than his own mother, who not only cuts up the bodies that he provides, but also disposes of the bones left over by hurling them into a local river in the wee hours of the frigid mornings. The way she sees it is that a mother should protect her child no matter what, but once her beloved Alex is in full swing, she can’t help but notice that the cannibalistic apple of her eye is starting to get decidedly sloppy.
Of course, none of this seems to bother Alex much as he goes from carefully selecting victims who nobody would miss, to impatiently picking anyone he limes the look of and soon his killings go from disturbing thrill kills to long, drawn out torture sessions that stretch on for days. As the police are fairly nonplussed about homeless street kids vanishing into thin air, it seems that Alex has found himself the perfect scenario to enact his grotesque urges without getting caught – however, as his appetite grows, even his own mother realises that there’s only ever going to be one outcome.
Anyone hoping that Michael Caissie’s dingy serial killer flick was going to break a few genre stereotypes will no doubt be disappointed as No Tears In Hell tends to follow the true crime playbook to the letter with claustrophobic sets, unrelenting misery and a typically intense lead performance. However, that’s kind of all the film has to offer and you can’t help but feel that with all the messed up stuff that reportedly happened to the real life killer, you can’t help but wonder if a far more engrossing and disturbing movie lurked more in the build up to his spree than the actual killings. The movie certainly touches on these points, but they’re inserted kind of clumsily into the main narrative as random asides such as Alex having a metal rod inserted into the opening of his penis in a failed attempt to increase virility which actually results in impotence.
Also distracting somewhat from the main story is the fact that the events have been moved from Siberia to Alaska which initially confused the Hell out of me as I was under the impression I was watching a film that was based on a Russian murderer and it took me a while to realise that in this case, “based on” meant relocating the whole thing to one of America’s more chillier parts. But while me bring slow on the uptake is obviously my own fault, I have to say that No Tears In Hell doesn’t really make any changes that makes the sordid tale of Alexander Spesivtsev anything more than just your standard slog through abject misery. Shadowhunter’s Luke Baines may certainly have the bone structure and the steely thousand yard stare required to play a real life murderer, but while he can scowl menacingly with the best of them, the film has him endlessly quote facts and figures from mansplaining to us about other serial killers, to giving us impromptu history lessons about the taboo of eating human flesh. But while this all is delivered in creepy monotone in an attempt to make Alex incredibly scary, it only serves to make him actually quite dull and the wrong kind of chore to sit through.
Matters are also thwarted by the fact that the actress who plays Alex’s mother can’t seem to deliver a single believable line reading which all but obliterates what should have been the most fascinating relationship in the film. After all, serial killer movies, both based on real events or utterly fabricated tend to create interesting bonds between overprotective mothers and their murdering spawn from Ed Gein to Jason Voorhees, but some weak performances and some iffy dialogue makes it just stilted, overly simplistic and worst of all, about as gripping as watching paint dry.
While the movie doesn’t even particularly come to life when Alex is carrying out his terrible work, choosing to either hue towards uninspired slasher tropes or languish in easy pickings of blandly distasteful torture porn when a more subtle hand might have been a wiser option. Still, I do have to give Caissie full marks for creating a real ambience about the exteriors as the striking scenes of the grim, snowed in apartment building where Alex lives is truly imposing. But once again the movie drops the ball when it comes to trying to create secondary plot lines that actually have a point. A detective trying to get to the bottom of things after he gets a tip from a victim-to-be goes absolutely nowhere and the fact that the movie doesn’t actually bother to show any other people living in Alex’s apartment block until neighbours and caretakers get involved around fifteen minutes towards the end proves to be fairly lazy story telling.
I’ll freely admit that true-crime tales about actual serial killers tend not to be my cup of tea, but even taken on this basis, No Tears In Hell proves to be both impressively lacking in scares and interest. However, while the occasional performance and bitterly cold atmosphere keeps it vaguely watchable, the story of Alexander Spesivtsev probably would have been better off remaining untold.
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