Office Killer

Toronto International Film Festival Program Book
1997

Office Killer
Cindy Sherman
USA, 1997
81 minutes
Colour/35mm
Production Company: Good Machine/Kardana-Swinsky Films/Good Fear
Executive Producer: Tom Carouso, John Hart, Ted Hope, James Schamus
Producer: Christine Vachon, Pamela Koffler
Screenplay: Elise MacAdam, Tom Kalin
Cinematographer: Russell Fine
Editor: Merril Stern
Production Designer: Kevin Thompson
Sound: Eliza Paley, Paul P. Soucek
Music: Evan Lurie
Principal Cast: Carol Kane, Molly Ringwald, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Barbara Sukowa, Michael Imperioli

It’s a dream come true. Cindy Sherman, the master photographer famous for macabre, nightmarish self-portraits and ironic, confrontational “film stills” is talked into making a horror film by legendary New York producer Christine Vachon (Safe, I Shot Andy Warhol). It will be a real horror film, evoking the early Polanski’s sense of inexorable, building suspense and Argento’s violent colour palette and audacious camera. Yet it will gleefully spoof the genre from which it springs. They line up a screenplay and the rest of the production team, their credits reading like an American independent “Who’s Who.” Sherman then casts Carol Kane, Molly Ringwald, Jeanne Tripplehorn and Barbara Sukowa in the leads—each a cult figure in her own right and each responsible for creating unique and highly influential women’s roles over the last 20 years.

The setting is “Constant Consumer” magazine. Meek and mousy copy editor Dorine Douglas (Kane) is shattered when the company is down-sized by a mean-spirited editor-in-chief (Sukowa, shamelessly playing the Ivana Trump card). Forced to work at home with her overbearing mother, Dorine’s only link to the outside world is through e-mail and late-night forays into the office to learn new computer programs.

One such night she accidentally kills an overbearing columnist and is empowered by the experience. Under cover of her part-time status, she uses her computer skills to cover up one murder after another. In her basement, she assembles the resulting corpses in a fantasy office-cum-diorama. As her spree continues, her basement “office” becomes increasingly elaborate and gory.

Meanwhile, Norah (Tripplehorn), the office axe-woman, tries to be friendly to the distraught Dorine; she feels some guilt for her role in ruining office morale. But Kim (Ringwald), a jaded editorial assistant, suspects the mild-mannered shrew; when her hysterical accusations alienate the rest of the staff, she finds herself alone on the track of the deadly office killer!

Sherman’s film is a triumph. Not only does she strike a near-perfect balance between eerie mood play and ribald camp, but also cleverly employs these actresses to play in type and yet fully in genre. Office Killer also features some of the most revoltingly grotesque gore effects since Peter Jackson’s Braindead.
—Noah Cowan