Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer
1986 · John McNaughton · Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer on Sightlines
4 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 2 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Listen for sound that doesn't match the still image on screen. (sound)
Static, posed shots of crime scenes play against audio of a struggle from another moment entirely, so image and sound never quite belong to the same time.
Payoff: You have to assemble what happened yourself, which is worse than being shown it. In the reading: audiovisual-disjunction. Deleuze calls this mismatch between what you see and what you hear audiovisual disjunction, and it makes the violence yours to imagine.
Notice how still the camera stays around a crime scene. (camera)
Charlie Lieberman holds static or near-static shots on aftermath rather than choreographing the violence itself, an observational stance closer to evidence photography than thriller filmmaking.
Payoff: The stillness makes ordinary rooms feel like the scariest place in the film.
Watch how soft-spoken and courteous Henry stays throughout. (performance)
Michael Rooker plays Henry as watchful and almost gentle, his violence arriving without any change in affect or warning sign.
Payoff: The film denies you the comfort of a visibly monstrous presence.
Notice how mundane every location in this film is. (setting)
Cramped apartments, diners, a gas station, parking lots: the production design emphasizes lived-in squalor over any stylized or gothic setting.
Payoff: Evil here happens in the most ordinary rooms imaginable, under ordinary light.
The 2 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Watch what the camera refuses to show you. What's withheld costs more than blood would.