When Lawrence asked me to review KatieBird *Certifiable Crazy Person, I thought he was sending me something silly (in the vein of Evil Dead 2 or Serial Mom, perhaps) because the title made me laugh. KatieBird's epithet is both clinical report and small-town rumor. Instead of being a “psychopath” or even “insane,” she's only certifiable as something that exists within the minds of other people. It's as if the neighborhood kids could hire some occultist scholar to prove that the creepy old lady next door really is a witch.

Like the creepy old lady next door, KatieBird is not at all how she's described. Yes, she kills people (viciously) but she's neither a case file nor a neighborhood myth. KatieBird's a person, and the film's greatest achievement is that it forces us to see her as one.

Almost before the opening credits have finished rolling, KatieBird Wilkins ties up her psychologist (Todd Gordon) and rapes him. The psychologist, used to holding power over others--being the rock, people offer their weakness to--is now helpless. And his patient is about to have the most profound therapy session of her life.

While the doctor is chained to the floor, KatieBird (Helene Udy) tells him about her life: of the white light in her daddy's barn, the boy whose books she once helped gather in the middle of the street, and how she blossomed into a sexual being by smashing her first love's face in with a hammer.

KatieBird kills for love, an emotional anchor that no man she knows can provide. Her daddy is wise, but doesn't follow his own advice. (“[N]ever do anything without first considering why,” he says, then offers her a smorgasboard of torture-tools before she can think about what she's doing). Her high school boyfriend jumps between KatieBird and another girl, and her psychologist merely listens to her without any feeling at all.

Without love, KatieBird turns to pain. “Hurt me,” she begs, hoping to feel something powerful and definite. As she pulls out men's teeth one by one, she cuts herself and orgasms--pain is more real to her than sex will ever be. Playing the teenage KatieBird, Taylor Dooley is both vulnerable and vicious. Her KatieBird is a little girl who must suddenly be a woman; she's still playing with deadly, deadly toys.

Writer/director Justin Paul Ritter makes us feel the chaos of KatieBird's world with multi-panels, bombarding us with two or three scenes at once. (Even the score, with its screeching electric guitars, overwhelms the senses). Most of the movie is presented this way; on the rare occasions that there's only one screen to look at, the image constantly changes position or size, sometimes becoming so small and centered that it feels like we're looking down a garbage chute at the characters below. While the double- and triple- and quadruple panels gave me a profound sensory empathy with KatieBird, they also made the film very hard to watch. It took so much effort just to figure out what was happening on the screen that I couldn't immerse myself into the movie. Be warned: KatieBird is not the kind of movie you can relax and enjoy. It requires constant attention-shifting and thinking, and probably a crossword puzzle in advance.

All this extra effort makes us, like KatieBird, distant from the horrors happening on screen. Looking at Dr. Richardson's bloody, ground-chuck face, we see his hands below and KatieBird's struggle with the chains on the right. These scenes split our attention and dilute our terror. In fact, the film's scariest sequence is when teen KatieBird tortures her boyfriend Kevin (Jun Hee Lee), because at that moment, the multi-paneling slows down.

KatieBird's frame story--a woman torturing a heretofore powerful man--reminded me of Takashi Miike's Audition. But while Miike made the torture intimate, as if I were the one getting accupuncture needles shoved under my eyes, Ritter's split-screened acts of violence have nothing to do with me at all. In Audition I identify with the victim; in KatieBird, the killer. It's the same story told in completely different ways, like two gifted bands playing the same song.

As hard as KatieBird is to watch, it's a truly beautiful film. “Scary” night scenes can be so dark that they get between the audience and the film, especially in a low-budget movie. But KatieBird doesn't hide in darkness. Most of it takes place in broad daylight, in sunny schoolyards and bright orchards. Even the rickety barn is full of light. By illuminating KatieBird's world, the film shines a light in the recesses of her sould, as well. We see everything about KatieBird: the sweet, the sad, and the sick.

Ritter says that Heretic Films believed in KatieBird *Certifiable Crazy Person from the beginning, and they certainly act like it. Visually, the movie looks as crisp and clear as a big-budget Hollywood movie. The disc is bursting with extras: commentary with Ritter and three actors (Helene Udy, Taylor Dooley and Lee Perkins), the documentary “Movies Not Excuses,” a brief behind-the-scenes look at the film's make-up, trailers, and even an audio CD of Daniel Iannantuono's musical score.

KatieBird *Certifiable Crazy Person may be hard to watch, but it's definitely worth the effort. Even its most minor characters have personalities, purposes beyond just serial killer fodder. I've never seen anything like KatieBird, and I'll certainly be keeping my eye on Justin Paul Ritter.