Portrait of a serial killer: intertextuality and gender in the portrait film

This article presents a feminist analysis of the serial killer portrait film—a cycle of contemporary low-budget films featuring serial killer protagonists. Although unusual within serial killer cinema for their frustration of identification and suspense, portrait films remain locked into wider popular discourses around serial murder, particularly in their intertextual aspects. In the portrait film, this results in a tautological construction of the serial killer (he kills because he is a killer, he is a killer because he kills) that places him not only beyond understanding but also outside society and, so, unconnected to normative constructions of masculinity.