Sigourney Weaver and Holly Hunter have to stop a serial killer imitating other, famous killers in 1995's Copycat. This isn't one for plumbing the psychological depths of criminality or law enforcement but it is a fun procedural.
Weaver plays Helen Hudsen, a criminal psychologist who's attacked by a killer after she gives a lecture on killers. She survives but is afflicted by agoraphobia and chronic panic attacks.
Holly Hunter plays MJ who, along with her partner played by Dermot Mulroney, is on the trail of the copycat killer. After Helen makes an anonymous phone call to give the police some clues, they track her down and enlist her reluctant aid.
Of course, her being agoraphobic means that somehow the killer manages to infiltrate her expensive apartment multiple times. This is one of those killers who seems to be just a little bit supernatural. It seemed the filmmakers had to keep up an even pace of Helen being terrorised. The guy manages to hack into her computer for some of the most astonishingly dated computer suspense drama I've ever seen. After the killer sends Helen an evil AVI file, Mulroney asks her if there's any way they can watch the video again. Helen says, yes, she put it "on tape". But then the killer somehow erased her tape! Maybe she ought to've locked it in the safe.
There are some other problems with details. When the killer imitates the Hillside Stranglers by dumping a woman's body containing semen from two perpetrators, the cops never even discuss the possibility of the killer having an accomplice or even wonder at all whom the other semen might have come from.
Weaver and Hunter both give good performances, of course, and director Jon Amiel keeps up a good pace.
Copycat is available on The Criterion Channel.
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