Or is he? While Dan Wells’ book I Am Not a Serial Killer (“creepy and sweet at once,” we called it) is about self-professed teenage sociopath John Wayne Cleaver staving off his deadlier tendencies with a rigid set of rules, there’s still definitely murder. Like the bodies that begin turning up, and John is the only one who can recognize that something’s wrong. And now, there are several recently released trailers for the movie adaptation of I Am Not a Serial Killer.
Director Billy O’Brien, in partnership with the Irish Film Board, has been working on adapting the first book in Wells’ John Cleaver series for six years. Wells wrote about the process last year, detailing some of the changes from page to screen and praising up-and-coming star Max Records, whose last creepy/sweet book adaptation was Where the Wild Things Are in 2009. Check out the trailer—also starring Christopher Lloyd and Breaking Bad‘s Laura Fraser—and see if it matches your mental image:
And you can watch a new, NSFW trailer over at Entertainment Weekly!
Here’s the book synopsis:
John Wayne Cleaver is dangerous, and he knows it.
He’s spent his life doing his best not to live up to his potential.
He’s obsessed with serial killers, but really doesn’t want to become one. So for his own sake, and the safety of those around him, he lives by rigid rules he’s written for himself, practicing normal life as if it were a private religion that could save him from damnation.
Dead bodies are normal to John. He likes them, actually. They don’t demand or expect the empathy he’s unable to offer. Perhaps that’s what gives him the objectivity to recognize that there’s something different about the body the police have just found behind the Wash-n-Dry Laundromat—and to appreciate what that difference means.
Now, for the first time, John has to confront a danger outside himself, a threat he can’t control, a menace to everything and everyone he would love, if only he could.
I Am Not a Serial Killer comes to limited theaters and Video OnDemand August 26.
