Killer Inside Me’ a truly creepy ride

There may be a couple of reasons why I woke so early this morning, just after 6 a.m. One is that I’m still dealing with jet lag. My body is confused, thinking that it’s really 3 in the afternoon.

But another, more believable reason, is that I watched an I FC On Demand movie last night titled “The Killer Inside Me.” The film, which was directed by the British director Michael Winterbottom , is based on the 1952 Jim Thompson novel of the same title. And it is a disturbing exercise in cinema.

Thompson was a bit touched. As one of the many writers who churned out pulp crime fiction in the 1940s and ‘50s, he wrote about strange characters who were fueled by murderous impulses they so often found impossible to control. “The Killer Inside Me” is a perfect example, focusing on a small-town Texas sheriff’s deputy who ends up going on a killing spree.

In the film, the deputy, Lou Ford, is played by Casey Affleck , younger brother of Ben Affleck and now a movie actor in his own right. He played Patrick Kenzie in “Gone Baby Gone” and Robert Ford in “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.” Affleck, who may be the most improbably movie star since, say, John C. Reilly - though he is, arguably, better looking - is perfect in the role, playing Ford as a seemingly mild-mannered guy who is torn by deep and disturbing tendencies toward violence.

He visists those tendencies on both a small-town prostitute (Jessica Alba) and her rich-boy boyfriend, setting in motion a series of crimes that ultimatly return to snare him. He says his intent is to get some payback for past wrongs, but it becomes fairly clear that he gives about as much thought to what he’s doing as a shark would to a baby seal served up on a surfboard.

In Thompson’s novel, Ford talks to us in first person, and Winterbottom’s screenwriter, John Curran, does employ some narration. But mostly we just watch things unfold as Winterbottom’s camera follows Ford through rural New Mexico (passing for the fictional Central City, Texas), capturing well the look and feel of the 1950s.

And, yeah, the violence and sex are prevalent and creepy, involving Affleck both with Alba and Kate Hudson. Winterbottom doesn’t give us any full nudity, as he did so famously in his 2004, uh, romance “9 Songs.” But the sex is portrayed graphically enough. And Winterbottom blends it so well with the violence that you may have trouble telling where one stops and the other begins. Which is the point.

“The Killer Inside Me” is not a film you’re likely to embrace, even if you wanted to. Like the novel upon which it is based, it’s a disturbing trek into psychological areas most of us would rather avoid. But it’s well made, effectively acted - especially by Affleck - and something just serious enough both to rouse the ire of self-appointed cultural censors and provoke the interest of those who love the art of challenging cinema.

Oh, and as I discovered, it has at least one added benefit. It’s a better sleep-stopper than caffeine.

Below : The trailer for Michael Winterbottom’s “The Killer Inside Me.”