Like Fritz Lang, David Fincher or Bong Joon Ho before him, talented debut filmmaker Lado Kvataniya uses the concept of police detective vs serial killer for an excitingly stylised, macabre and haunting narrative, that ultimately revolves around the identity of an era: in this case, the late 1980s Soviet Union. With Glasnost and the end of communist rule, the West also learned of the (unsurprising) fact that there were serial killers in Russia too – the most notorious case probably that of Andrei Chikatilo, nicknamed the Rostov Ripper, or the Russian Hannibal Lecter.
Based on these and many other sources, Kvataniya and screenwriter Olga Gorodetskaya constructed an immersive psychological puzzle, jumping back and forth in time, to reveal ever new-possible motives for the actions of all the protagonists. It all starts in 1990, when Detective Issa Davydov is celebrating his promotion and receives a call, reporting a crime that looks precisely like the ones of the serial killer that he famously captured some years before ...
洛杉矶西好莱坞,发生了一起妓女被杀事件。资深侦探钱德勒·曼宁(阿尔弗雷德·莫里纳 Alfred Molina饰)与新秀搭档斯瑞特·威尔金森(夏恩·韦斯特 Shane West饰)前往调查此事。而曼宁还要处理焦头烂额的家庭问题,他的妻子患有严重的精神疾病并被监禁起来,而女儿则一直抱怨责备曼宁对母亲的事情置之不理。与此同时,一位焦躁不安的家庭主妇埃伦·邦汀(霍普·戴维斯 Hope Davis饰)与她时常消失不见踪影的丈夫正面临着财务问题,急需一笔钱。他们将后院出租给一位神秘的房客马尔科姆·斯雷特(西蒙·贝克 Simon Baker饰)后,就再没见过他现身。此时,又一名妓女被发现死在街上。曼宁推断,凶手是在模仿开膛手杰克的罪行,这两起案件与七年前的妓女被杀案件同为连环杀手所为。他甚至怀疑,罗德里格斯凶杀案被错判了。