Mary (Kristin Calabrese) is a teenage hooker who gets fed up with taking men’s shit and decides to get revenge by killing all the scumbags that do her wrong on a daily basis. Mary’s methods of disposal include shooting, poisoning, and strangling. Eventually, she runs into a male serial killer, and while I wouldn’t say they “fall in love”, he proves to be someone she can play house with. (And by “play house with”, I mean “murder scumbags with”). But will her happiness last?
I Was a Teenage Serial Killer was the low budget short film debut of director Sarah Jacobson. It’s very rough and amateurish in places, but there are certainly moments here that work. There are times where it feels kind of like a black and white gender swapped version of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, but with a punk rock DIY attitude and sense of humor. The scene where Mary kills a guy during sex for removing his condom is rather effective, and also contains some surprising nudity. Too bad a lot of the shots (both in this scene and elsewhere in the movie) are out of focus.
The film is only twenty-five minutes long, but it manages to pack in a surprisingly high body count in that short amount of time. Although the death scenes aren’t overly gruesome, they are fairly bloody. Jacobson’s stabs at humor (pun possibly intended) are successful maybe half of the time. It helps that Calabrese has a likeable screen presence about her. She makes Mary’s final confession scene heartfelt, even if some of the dialogue is a bit on the nose.
Sure, I Was a Teenage Serial Killer is pretty uneven. However, it does have what is probably the only death by Dustbuster scene in cinema history. Because of that, I’d say it’s worthy of your time.
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