VIFF 2019 | Compulsions for Killing – She's A 'Killer Queen'

"I have horrifying fantasies."

Vancouver International Film Festival

VIFF 2019—Toronto filmmaker Ramin Fahrenheit shoots his first low-budget psychodrama Killer Queen on sumptuously grainy Super 8mm film with an artsy, nostalgic energy and style. Starring actress Fatima Maziani as a troubled young woman with compulsions of killing and drawn to strangers, the grindhouse flick makes for an interesting showcase of indie genre filmmaking.

Evoking a lo-fi cinema aesthetic, Killer Queen explores dark psychological trauma through its non-linear story of drifter characters colliding on converging paths. Criss-crossing between drab interior locations and the shadowy streets of Toronto, the intentionally stilted dialogue and appropriately eerie electronic score by Norman Orenstein only heightens Fahrenheit's economical editing and storytelling structure expressing its seedy subject matter.

Killer Queen draws out its pulpiness as stylish throwback genre fare of danger, strangers, and random killing. It's a fairly compelling and consistent narrative that wisely accentuates its settings and motions over modern conventions to build a propulsive mystery of interlocked characters and artful scenes.

Killer Queen premieres at the 2019 Vancouver International Film Festival as part of the True North and Future//Present streams at the Rio Theatre.


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