Office Killer

By the late nineties, Cindy Sherman was the undisputed queen of the art world. Her Untitled Film Stills were hanging in major museums, and the question wasn’t if, but when she would make the leap to the silver screen. It felt like a natural progression for a photographer who had spent her entire career capturing fictional movie scenes in a single frame. Yet, the jump to the film set was a daring experiment: Sherman traded her solitary studio—where she held absolute control—for the dynamic chaos of a full film crew.

The result was OFFICE KILLER, a pitch-black horror-comedy that does exactly what you’d expect from Sherman: it’s jarring, intriguing, and delightfully grotesque. Think of it as a fever dream somewhere between PSYCHO and THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA. Our slasher-in-chief is the timid Dorine, a loyal copy editor who, after a fatal workplace accident, accidentally transforms into a twisted serial killer. What follows, however, is no standard slasher flick, but a bizarre, surreal character study laced with bone-dry humor.

This is largely because Sherman doesn’t look through the lens like a traditional filmmaker, but like a photographer. She composes scenes that echo her iconic photographic work: bold use of color, unsettling angles, and a sharp eye for the frayed edges of identity. Featuring 90s icons like Molly Ringwald and Michael Imperioli, and a script co-written by Todd Haynes, Office Killer is a fascinating curiosity. It is the only time Sherman’s world doesn’t stand still, but instead dances across the screen in all its bloody, vivid glory.