Office Killer (1997)
Seen on 23 December 1997 for $8 at the Quad Cinema.
The worst-kept secret in my office is my *necrology*--a list of everyone who has left the premises during my tenure of 3+ years. Publishing has its victims and there is often lots of turnover. In *Office Killer*, Dorine Douglas (Carol Kane) keeps a very different, more accurate necrology, one created at her own hand. Indeed, her basement becomes a mortuary, filling up with her victims--people at work who would have gladly seen her downsized out of her copy editing job.
Norah Reed (Jeanne Tripplehorn) is brought in to bring the magazine--*Constant Consumer*--kicking and screaming into the 21st Century. This means making jobs part-time and sending people to work at home. Dorine, a mousy, unfashionable nervous wreck with a nearly robotic voice and nervous mannerisms, is practically a nonentity. Ignored and disliked by those who don't know her, she is chosen to be made part-time and work at home via laptop, even though she knows more than most of the young ne'er-do-wells at work. People often misspell her name, or even call her my the wrong name. After her accidental electrocution of the lecherous writer Gary (David Thornton), Dorine decides to bring his corpse home, and then adds to her macabre doll collection with premeditated murder.
A consequence of Dorine's murders is that she dresses better and her worth becomes more apparent to her editors and to Norah the "efficiency expert"--despite the fervent protests of the young layabout Kim (Molly Ringwald). What Dorine's co-workers discover, only when it's too late, is that Dorine is very smart, and uses what she learns by just peeking over their shoulders against them.
The biggest problem with *Office Killer* is that it gets very grisly. While Dorine's annoying crippled mother lies awaiting service upstairs, she is busy downstairs talking to her dead "friends" as they decompose. Dorine's murders are also extended to non-officemates; there is even a corpse down there in the end that we never even see killed. Dorine also dismembers some of the victims, attaching the fingers to the hands of her kitchen clock. It gets a lot less tongue-in-cheek as it goes on.
*Office Killer* offers a certain amount of elegance on a low budget. The screen credits slither over items you would find in an office by merely projecting them via slides. The music by Evan Lurie is low-key but very intense and sustains the film's edgy mood. Also, director Cindy Sherman is able to manage some wonderfully stifling shots from exteriors, caging her characters by framing them in windows or fire escape terraces and brick walls. The offices are drab and ill-lit, adding to the macabre mood of the film.
At one point, before Dorine has mastered the laptop, Danny (Michael Imperioli) tells her that some people like working from home so much, they "hate to talk to people" after a while, as if Dorine's most valuable to the magazine if she is never actually seen. When Dorine kills people, the office staff notices they are gone, but the police are never actually called it. It's as if it's more annoying to have inconvenienced the work routine, never mind that someone might actually be in trouble. *Office Killer* makes a nice counterpart to *Denise Calls Up*, another movie in which the reduction of personal contact thanks to technology is explored.
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