II was listening to a podcast of "This American Life," a weekly public radio show produced in Chicago.</p><p>The program chooses a theme each week and invites people to read non-fiction stories from their lives that relate to the theme.</p><p>Last week I listened to "House on Loon Lake," about a boy and his buddies who discover an abandoned house a few miles from their summer camp. On a dare, they enter the house. Furniture and photographs are still in place, food in the pantry, a wallet on the dresser, old letters and a calendar on the wall from 1945 (the boys discover the home in the 1970s). </p><p>For obvious reasons, the house has all the makings of a nightmare. And for the next 30 years, the boys return to the home, gather clues and hypothesize as to what horrific event prompted the family to abandon their home and life. </p><p>I got chills. A depressed war widow unable to live in her home after the death of her husband, a horrific murder, an evil family chased out of town? </p><p>Whatever the reason, I was in the mood to watch something scary. </p><p>So I went out and found a copy of Michael Winterbottom's "The Killer Inside Me," starring Casey Affleck as a small-town Texas deputy, Lou, who leads a double life as a psychotic serial killer. </p><p>The film dives into all the extremes, Lou's desire to kill spares no one, even those that he loves. He's also a sexual predator of sorts, and maintains a rough relationship with a prostitute played by Jessica Alba and his good-girl fianc&#233;e (Kate Hudson). Both actresses, whom we are rarely accustomed to seeing in mature work, give wonderfully developed performances. </p><p>Affleck, as an unraveling psychopath, is controlled and calculated; his performance is frightening. And Winterbottom does a good job of re-creating a small Texas town during the 1950s. </p><p>But, none of that matters if the story is filled with holes, and the character left unfinished.</p><p>A lot of critics complained about the strong violence, physical and sexual, against the two female characters; this didn't offend me so much (I went into the film expecting something gruesome) as a poorly written script. A first-person narrative has no excuse for not providing deeper motivations for a man obsessed with killing. </p><p>When we turned off the film, my friend immediately asked if I'd ever seen "American Psycho," whose intentions are the same as "Killer," first-person narrative about an ordinary-looking man obsessed with violence.</p><p>That, if you are in the mood, is an excellent alternative.