No Man of God is a matter-of-fact, direct response to the lurid resurgence of the true crime genre. In narrative and documentary true crime films, there can be a sense of exploitation in the countless crime-scene photos or recreations, with filmmakers searching for the missing psychological puzzle piece that explains a killer’s violent impulses. Director Amber Sealey and screenwriter Kit Lesser reference recent crime thrillers almost like a bait-and-switch, which sets up a final act that upends a lot of genre tropes. Clever revisionism is not enough for a successful film, so it is the strong lead performances that give the stripped-down story its dramatic heft.
The script and staging invite us to think about The Silence of the Lambs. Elijah Wood plays the seemingly naïve FBI Agent Bill Hagmaier, and his boss asks him to profile the infamous serial killer Ted Bundy (Luke Kirby), who is awaiting a death sentence in Florida. There is the familiar descent into the prison, and the strange anticipation over a civil conversation with a violent criminal. The difference is that Kirby’s Bundy has none of the Grand Guignol affectations we associate with Hannibal Lecter. According to him – and the film’s POV – he is just a man who acts on impulses that all men share. That is a tough pill for audiences to swallow, and Sealey takes her time building toward it. While there are some scenes outside the prison, No Man of God is effectively a two-hander between Bill and Ted.
Sealey takes interesting detours away from our expectations. When Bill gets assigned to profile Ted, he insists that he looks at no crime-scene photos. There are no flashbacks or physical recreations of Ted’s crimes, and Bill makes no attempt to contact the victims’ families. Their conversations unfold over several years, and the film strips away action until psychology is all we have left. Bill’s technique is simple: if Bill treats him as a confidante or friend, then Ted will reciprocate in kind. It is a clever reversal of the aforementioned Lambs, since Bill has no qualms about discussing his own personal life with Ted. Sealey’s camera placement amplifies or deflates tension through the long dialogue scenes. We first regard Ted in awkward angles, his face obscured and abstracted. When the camera finally opens the space after a few exchanges, it obscures Ted’s body so we can forget he is handcuffed. It is a subtle shift, but one that invites us to interrogate how we feel.
If Bundy remains hermetically sealed in a prison, the rest of the film does not exist in a vacuum. Ted’s execution is the film’s climax, and Sealey depicts all the hangers-on that come out of the woodwork. There are investigators who try to get one last confession, preachers who hear his confession and gawkers outside the prison who cheer his death. This is all part of Sealey’s critique: they latch onto Ted because his crimes are extraordinary, each vying for a piece of him in an unseemly way. Even more intriguing are the brief, hallucinatory montages between each major dialogue scene. They appear to happen in Bill’s mind, often unfolding as he regards a young woman in his path. Is he thinking about Ted’s dark impulses or exploring his own? Sealey and Lesser avoid easy answers, but they disabuse the idea that Bill’s interactions with Ted changes him in some irrevocably dark way. If anything is different, it is his sense of curiosity.
Wood and Kirby are good foils for each other. Wood abandons his boyish demeanor and looks by making himself appear frumpy – his suit does not quite fit, he has a bad haircut – which hides reserves of intelligence and insight. On the other hand, Kirby complicates his natural charisma for a character who is both unapologetic and yearns to be understood. All this complicates in a bizarre, disturbing scene of shared roleplay. At one point, Ted suggests that he can lead Bill to the darkest places of his mind, one that few have seen and survived. How he gets there – and how Bill participates in this thought experiment – is where No Man of God implicates the audience in its fascination with Bundy. It is a powerful scene that relies heavily on the audience’s imagination, and it may deter longtime genre fans from being so obsessed with murder podcasts.
Despite this willingness to speak to Bundy, to operate on his level in some way, Bill never loses his sense of morality. Bill is a religious man, one who tells Ted he prays every morning. A lesser film would use that detail to suggest that Bill can easily have his values shaken, but No Man of God doesn’t rely on that familiar arc. It is clear what Bill thinks of Ted and his crimes, and there is a kiss-off line late in the film that, more than anything else, obliterates the idea that serial killers are riddles waiting to be solved. They do not interest us, not really, and instead serve as little more than a depraved funhouse mirror. If nothing else, No Man of God exposes the culpability in a genre that thrives on gawkers, who are also depraved in their own way.
Photo courtesy of RLJE Films
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