My Dear Killer wants you to believe it’s one of the crown jewels of the giallo genre. Critics have called it “vibrant” and “well designed,” which is technically true if you’re only grading the wallpaper. Visually, it’s a sleek, handsome little thriller. Intellectually, it’s what you’d get if you fed a crime novel to a woodchipper and tried to reassemble the pages while blindfolded.
Murder By Heavy Machinery (And Heavy Handedness)
We open with one of the most unintentionally funny “grim” murders in giallo history: an insurance investigator, Umberto Paradisi, is decapitated by an excavator in a rural swamp. It’s supposed to be shocking; instead it looks like an industrial accident filmed by someone who really hates safety regulations. It’s the kind of death that screams, “We had access to this machine for six hours—roll camera.”
Soon after, the excavator operator is found hanged, which the police initially chalk up to suicide, because in this universe, anyone traumatized on the job immediately runs out and hangs themselves with a note that might as well read, “Please don’t investigate this further.” Luckily, we have a hero.
Inspector Peretti, King of the Obvious
Enter Police Commissioner Luca Peretti (George Hilton), whose main talent is having the script on his side. He instantly realizes the operator didn’t kill himself because of one tiny clue, which the rest of the force apparently missed while napping. This becomes a pattern: Peretti strolls into crime scenes, makes a bland observation, and the film treats it like Sherlock Holmes just solved Cold Case Christianity.
Peretti discovers that Paradisi was working on a cold kidnapping/murder case involving little Stefania Moroni and her wealthy industrialist father. Both died after a ransom handoff went bad. Paradisi was apparently trying to sell what he found to the grieving family, because nothing says “ethical insurance work” like monetizing child murder.
A Family Tree Of Walking Red Herrings
Peretti then launches into the most lethargic house tour in thriller history. He visits:
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Stefania’s traumatized mother
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Oliviero, the one-handed uncle (subtle!)
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Various Moroni relatives
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A smattering of servants who all look suspicious but rarely do anything
They all brood in beautifully framed shots, smoke, and drop vague lines that might be clues or might just be ADR filling the silence. Oliviero, who literally has one hand missing, might as well be wearing a sign that says, “Please ignore the giant neon arrow pointing at my stump. I am definitely not important later.”
The film pretends these are complex suspects; really, they’re human furniture sprinkled around until the next murder.
Murder Montage: Because Plot Is Hard
Once Peretti starts poking around, the killer gets busy in that special giallo way: killing anyone who might know something, might have seen something, or might merely be convenient to kill in an interesting way.
We get:
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Paradisi’s widow, strangled at a public transport station
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Stefania’s kindergarten teacher, mutilated with a circular saw
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Mattia, a poor guy in a shack, bludgeoned with a statue
The killings are staged with decent flair, but they feel less like a careful cover-up and more like the killer is playing improv Whack-a-Mole with the cast list. It’s the classic giallo problem: if you kill everyone who could possibly incriminate you, congratulations—you’ve just created a lovely trail of corpses leading directly to your door.
The Mirror, The Message, The Melodrama
Eventually, Peretti revisits the shack where Stefania and her father were left to die. There, he decides—based on a hunch—that the little girl left a clue to her kidnapper’s identity on the back of a mirror.
Of course she did.
Not, say, written on a wall, or scratched into the floor, but delicately doodled on the reverse of a household object that will be removed, misplaced, and eventually change owners. This kid didn’t need rescuing; she needed an agent.
An elderly woman unknowingly ends up with the mirror, prompting another killer attack that Peretti barely interrupts in time. He gets hold of the mirror, turns it over, and finds the smoking gun: a crude drawing of a human figure with one of its hands missing.
Subtle. Elegant. About as mysterious as a Scooby-Doo villain leaving a business card.
The Grand Finale: You Guessed It, Didn’t You?
For the climax, Peretti gathers the Moroni clan at their house, ready for a grand parlor-room unmasking. He scolds the killer in advance, accusing them of cold-blooded murder while boasting about the “one detail” they overlooked. Then he shows the mirror to poor Beniamino, who screams, someone cuts the lights, and chaos erupts.
When the lights come back on, we find Oliviero sobbing behind a chair, finally confessing that yes, he killed Stefania and her father out of jealousy for the dad’s wealth, and then everyone else to cover it up. All because a child drew a stick figure missing a hand and he never thought, “Maybe I should burn that.”
The mirror clue, visually, is neat. Logically, it’s catastrophic. We’re meant to believe that a man cunning enough to orchestrate multiple murders over time was undone by basic arts and crafts. The entire plot hinges on him not realizing, “Huh, that drawing looks exactly like me. Maybe I should do something about it.”
Stylish Shell, Hollow Center
To be fair, the movie looks good. The cinematography is clean and attractive; locations are atmospheric, and the camera knows how to frame a face, a doorway, or a corpse. The pacing, while not exactly propulsive, is at least steady. It has the polish of a well-pressed suit—on someone who forgot to put on a shirt underneath.
Characters breeze in and out with minimal development. Dr. Anna Borgese, for example, floats through as Peretti’s sort-of love interest, sort-of exposition outlet, and mostly decorative presence. Others exist only long enough to provide information or die. The film keeps telling us this case is emotionally devastating, yet nobody seems especially traumatized for more than thirty seconds at a time.
Giallo, But Make It Paint-By-Numbers
Giallo fans are used to contrived plots and wild twists, but the best of them compensate with atmosphere, eccentricity, or genuinely unsettling images. My Dear Killer has atmosphere, but it uses it like wallpaper behind a very generic crime story.
You get:
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A black-gloved killer
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A cop who’s half bored, half smug
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A tragic child backstory
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A wealthy, dysfunctional family
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A final revelation that feels preordained
What you don’t get is much personality. There’s no real kink, no baroque flourish that makes you lean forward and think, “Okay, that was insane, but in a good way.” Instead, the film politely checks off giallo boxes while pretending it just reinvented the genre.
“One of the Best,” Apparently
The funniest thing about My Dear Killer isn’t in the movie—it’s in the way it’s been described. “One of the best films in the thriller genre.” “One of the best, most vibrant giallo products.” Sure. It’s competent, well-shot, and sometimes mildly tense. But if this is “one of the best,” then we need to have a sit-down with whoever’s grading on this curve.
Watching it, you can almost hear the film whisper, “Look how serious I am,” while clutching a plot that revolves around a killer forgetting that children can draw.
Verdict: Dear Killer, It’s Not Me, It’s You
My Dear Killer is like a beautifully wrapped present that turns out to be socks—plain ones. It opens with a bang (via construction equipment), sprinkles in some grisly deaths, teases a tragic mystery, and then resolves everything with a clue straight out of a school art project.
If you’re a giallo completist, it’s worth a watch as a curiosity: a decent-looking, slightly dull entry that takes itself more seriously than it earns. But if you’re looking for something truly gripping or gloriously unhinged, this one might leave you staring at your own mirror, wondering why you just spent 95 minutes watching a movie where the smartest person is a dead child with crayons.
