Serial Killer Cinema Goes Mainstream With Ed Kemper

Every few months, Hollywood resurrects another monster from our collective nightmare. This time, it's Edmund Kemper—the 6'9″ “Co-Ed Killer” who murdered ten people, including his own mother, before cutting off her head and using it as a dartboard. Charming dinner conversation, isn't it? Yet here we are, watching Brandon Kirk transform into this towering predator in Dread's newly released trailer, with the same fascination that keeps true crime podcasts topping the charts.

But let's ask teh uncomfortable question: Why do we keep making these films?

The trailer reveals director Chad Ferrin's approach—working from a script co-written with Stephen Johnston, who has practically built a career cataloging America's most infamous murderers (Ted Bundy, Ed Gein, Starkweather). Johnston's true crime portfolio suggests we've created an entire subgenre of entertainment that essentially functions as serial killer baseball cards. Collect 'em all!

There's something particularly unsettling about watching the Kemper story repackaged as entertainment. Here was a man who, after murdering his grandparents at 15, convinced psychiatrists he was rehabilitated—only to embark on a killing spree targeting female hitchhikers once released. The trailer seems to lean into his manipulative charm, the same quality that allowed the real Kemper to evade suspicion while befriending the very police officers hunting him.

This isn't just another slasher flick. The cast includes genre veteran Brinke Stevens (The Slumber Party Massacre), Lew Temple (The Devil's Rejects), and Robert Miano (Donnie Brasco)—suggesting Dread is positioning this as a serious psychological study rather than exploitation schlock. But the line between examination and exploitation has always been razor-thin in true crime.

Does our consumption of these stories represent a healthy way to process societal fears, or are we simply rubbernecking at human suffering packaged as entertainment? The “based on a true story” label somehow grants us permission to indulge our darkest curiosities while maintaining moral distance.

Meanwhile, somewhere, the families of Kemper's victims continue living with their grief.

When Ed Kemper hits Digital and VOD on April 8th, viewers will once again engage in that peculiar ritual of American media consumption—being horrified while simultaneously reaching for more popcorn. The trailer promises all the psychological tension of watching a man who could articulate his pathology with frightening clarity (the real Kemper gave chillingly insightful prison interviews) alongside graphic recreations of his crimes.

What does it say about us that we've created an entire entertainment ecosystem around these stories? Perhaps the most disturbing revelation isn't about Edmund Kemper at all—it's about our own appetite for darkness wearing the respectable mask of “true crime.”

Would you watch someone's worst nightmare if it were packaged as entertainment? The trailer suggests millions of us will do exactly that.