seeing brian cox in the all-white cell captures something truly haunting about serial killers that a lot of media doesn’t portray: the capacity to be normal. multiple times in the movie lecktor lounges, an arm draped casually over his face or his socked feet resting high on an wall as he lays on his back. his lecktor is a human first, someone intelligent and capable of being very personable as he manipulates a secretary into giving him graham’s home address. yet there is something off about him, something that hints to the lizard part of your brain that he’s dangerous. 

the whiteness of his cell also works so well because lecktor has a pure understanding of himself compared to will graham who for most of the movie is almost manic in his desire to hide himself and pretend he doesn’t have the same impulses and thought patterns as lecktor. one of the best movies to explore the idea that profilers have to think like the serial killers to catch them (the same idea as all of mindhunter)

mann’s stylistic directing, especially his use of colors should put this high in the ranking of best killer movies ever made. i would kill to see a legacy screening in the theaters