Texas Killing Fields (film): It showed promise but a seriously slow pace ruins it

Texas Killing Fields is a crime thriller that is based on actual events that occurred in an stretch of rural Texas that actually is known as exactly what the name of this film is. Although I was unaware of these murders there have been 30 cases of kidnapping and murder that happened in this very real part of Texas since the 70's. As is eventually shown in the film the serial killing is the work of not one individual but a group: To this day, despite local, state, and even the FBI investigating, most of the murders have not been solved.

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From what I have written above, it sounds as though it has the formula necessary for a really interesting story, doncha think? I certainly did when I was reading the Netflix writeup of it and eventually decided to watch it. The cast is well-selected and for the most part do a fantastic job. Jeffrey Dan Morgan - who would later become simply known as the amazing character "Negan" in The Walkind Dead- and Chloe Grace Mertz (Kick Ass girl) stand out in particular.

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The movie starts out quick, as one would expect a crime thriller to do, with a vague glimpse into the mind of the killer and what it was possibly like to be one of his victims. After that we are slowly (and I mean really slowly) introduced to the various characters. While the film mostly focuses on detectives Mike Souder (Worthington) and Brian Heigh (Morgan), we spend a decent amount of time on Anne Sliger (Moretz), who is obviously being set up to be one of the future kidnapping victims.

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What I had thought was going to be an action-filled thriller was actually more of a lesson in police procedure and family history, which director Ami Canaan Mann had said he was very careful to keep as accurate as possible but also vague enough to protect the identities of the actual people that were involved.

This had real potential to be something great, but I think taht since Mann tried to stick to the actual events so closely might be part of the reason why it ends up being so god-awful boring. I like a true story as much as the next guy, it is actually my favorite type of film. However, since they apparently refused to deviate from what is already known by investigators (and investigators do NOT know very much) there really wasn't a lot of case material to work with.

Instead, what we end up with is nearly 2 hours of mostly people just talking and arguing in police stations mixed in with the rather horrible home-life of Anne Sliger, who is neglected by her drug-addicted mother and is well known to wander the community and is therefore a perfect target for abduction.

I think the biggest problem is the fact that we are thrust into a story about an already existing investigation and given almost zero backstory on WTF is going on. This makes the film difficult to follow and because we aren't actually made aware of the fact that the investigation into multiple murders that have been going on for quite some time at this point (in the film) it seems as though the detectives are just blowing their tops for no reason. If they had simply put some clues in there about how this had been going on for many years what appears as overacting might make more sense to us.

_{Get ready for a whole lotta standing around and talking... because that is 90% of the film}

I understand what the director was going for and I would imagine that the families of the actual victims are quite pleased with the fact that the film-makers didn't speculate but rather, stuck to the facts. Unfortunately it is precisely because of this that Texas Killing Fields is a snooze-fest that only becomes exciting in the final 10 minutes, and then it is abruptly over.

This film performed very poorly at the box office and received almost exclusively negative reviews - a fact that I was unaware of before I started watching it.

My overall rating: 3 / 10