Yiling Li (Jennifer Tao) has arrived in London after travelling halfway around the world from China, and she is determined to make the best of her situation by raising as much money as she possibly can and using it to buy her own place. In the meantime? She has to live with her cousin Yao Yao (Xinyao Lin) in a house neither can really afford, not even combined: Li has had to turn off the heating to ensure they can make the rent this month, and it is by no means the warmest time of the year in rainy Britain. But she sees a way out, and after being cleared by immigration she leaves a job in a kitchen to become an estate agent. It just so happens one of the properties under her remit has a real reputation behind it...
The mystique of serial killers is not the healthiest thing to celebrate, and yet there is an industry of documentaries and fictionalisations and books that delve into their horrific practices all for the prurient interest of the fans of such things. They can tell themselves they are taking an academic interest, or arming themselves against the worst of humanity by being aware of what to look out for and guarding against becoming a victim, but the fact remains most people who are fascinated are seeking a gruesome story for that frisson of revulsion or electricity of getting inside the heads of some of the least useful members of society, those who prey on others to get a shot of confidence or sexual or violent thrill from murdering them.
In recent years, the serial killer's power over the media has been supplanted by the spree killer who goes on to murder as many people as possible in one burst of activity, but perhaps because these men have often died behind bars over the years, unsavoury characters like Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer have earned their own movies as well as documentaries. British killers have been less prominent in the adaptation from real life to big screen, but the Scottish murderer in London Nilsen got his own dedicated effort with this, a drama directed by Polish Rafael Kapelinski and part financed by China. Its premise had Li realising she could make a pretty packet renting the Nilsen flat for an hour, so those interested parties could get up to whatever they wanted, within reason, in a location where well over a dozen young men and teenage boys were slaughtered and disposed of.
If this meant Li is a woman with some shadowy motives that were ambivalent at best as regards the bad taste of this enterprise (her bosses are oblivious), then so be it, and even when her pursuits leave danger growing too close for comfort, she apparently feels she is too far in over her head to stop now, and besides, she likes the money. But it quickly becomes apparent her clients are perverts, not expert criminologists ("It gives me an erection!" proclaims one), including in a truly bizarre scene a dwarf (Lee Gill) who dresses as a World War 2 Nazi and goosesteps around Nilsen's living room, and the sense of playing with fire descends on her. The film took a dim view of true crime fans, we see nobody here who is taking an interest in human nature, the grim side or otherwise, and they're not interested in mourning the victims either, they really get off on being so close to the violence and degradation. Filmed mostly at night, so the yellow sodium streetlights were working overtime for atmosphere, it was a brief, eerily low-key but unsettling affair giving you nobody to really sympathise with. Music by Nathan W Klein.
[Showing as part of the KINOTEKA POLISH FILM FESTIVAL 2022 - 9TH MARCH TO 3RD APRIL. All of the festival proceeds go to SOS Children's Villages Ukraine emergency appeal.]
