Prelude to a Headache
Ah, Sanctimony. A title that promises solemnity, virtue, maybe even a moral lesson. Instead, what you get is Uwe Boll’s warm-up lap before he started churning out cinematic war crimes like House of the Dead and Alone in the Dark. If this was Boll’s attempt to show us his grasp of the psychological thriller, then congratulations, he proved psychology can be lobotomized and thrills can be euthanized.
The premise is simple: a Wall Street prodigy, Tom Gerrick (Casper Van Dien, forever cursed to be the Dollar Store Tom Cruise), moonlights as a serial killer. It sounds like American Psycho, if you stripped out the satire, the wit, and the acting, and replaced them with Boll’s idea of “style”: endless zooms, awkward angles, and dialogue that sounds like it was written by a German-to-English phrasebook from 1973.
Casper Van Dien: Murder by Hair Gel
Let’s talk about Casper Van Dien. Once upon a time, he was the poster boy for Starship Troopers, a film that skewered fascism with tongue firmly in cheek. Here, however, his cheek muscles must have gone on strike, because the only expression he can muster is “constipated smirk.” As Tom Gerrick, he’s supposed to be the slick, intelligent serial killer who toys with cops for fun. Instead, he looks like a guy auditioning for a toothpaste commercial, then remembered halfway through the shoot that he left his oven on.
His “psychopath” moments are hilarious, not chilling. When he smirks, you don’t think “terrifying predator,” you think “junior broker who just farted during a conference call but muted himself in time.” Watching him cut out people’s eyes, ears, and tongues isn’t scary — it’s like watching a boy scout with a Swiss Army knife who didn’t read the manual.
Michael Paré and Eric Roberts: Detectives in Purgatory
Then we get to the cops. Michael Paré plays Jim Renart, the lead detective. He delivers his lines with all the passion of a man waiting at the DMV. Next to him is Eric Roberts, the Lieutenant, a man whose career consists of showing up in movies like this, cashing a check, and pretending it never happened. Roberts radiates the energy of someone who just realized he’s getting paid in Canadian dollars.
Their dynamic is supposed to be a tense, ticking-clock game of cat and mouse with Gerrick. Instead, it feels like two dads trying to figure out how to program a VCR while their teenage son laughs at them. The dialogue is wooden enough to be repurposed as IKEA furniture.
The Plot: Dead on Arrival
The killings themselves should be grisly and horrifying, but Boll shoots them with the finesse of a drunken wedding videographer. Victim count aside, there’s no tension, no build-up, just snip snip, scream scream, and then long stretches of Casper Van Dien trying to look sinister by staring into the middle distance.
By the midpoint, Gerrick literally calls the police on himself just to get attention, because even the killer realizes this movie is boring. He goes on live television and shoots people, as though Boll thought, “You know what would elevate this script? A Columbine reenactment with all the gravitas of a toothpaste ad.” Later, Gerrick crashes his ex-fiancée’s non-wedding (yes, non-wedding, because apparently even the script couldn’t commit) and starts blasting away. Subtle, this ain’t.
Uwe Boll’s Direction: Cinema by Accident
If you’ve never seen an Uwe Boll movie, imagine someone filmed a soap opera during an earthquake. That’s Sanctimony. Boll fills scenes with bizarre close-ups, nonsensical cuts, and the kind of pacing that suggests he shot the movie while speedrunning through his cocaine stash.
The score doesn’t help either. It’s a cheap, repetitive racket that sounds like someone banged a Casio keyboard against the wall until the batteries fell out. Every murder scene is paired with this “ominous” drone that’s less scary and more like elevator music for Satan’s dentist office.
Jennifer Rubin and the “Female Cop” Stereotype
Jennifer Rubin plays Detective Dorothy Smith, which already sounds like a placeholder name someone forgot to change before final draft. She’s tough, competent, and naturally sidelined by the script in favor of Casper Van Dien monologues. Her character gets the thankless role of “cop who warns the others but is ignored until it’s too late.” In other words, she’s every woman in every Boll film: a plot device with legs.
The Violence: Gratuitous but Not Effective
Look, I’m not squeamish. Show me gore, show me splatter, show me eyeballs flying across the room like ping-pong balls. But Boll’s gore isn’t shocking — it’s just sad. The editing is so clumsy that you know exactly when the fake blood pump is about to kick in. It’s like watching a magician pull a rabbit out of a hat after showing you the rabbit stuffed inside five minutes earlier.
The Ending: Why God, Why?
After Gerrick’s TV shooting spree and his party massacre, you’d expect the finale to go full tilt into absurdity. Instead, the ending limps across the finish line like a marathon runner with both legs broken. Gerrick’s downfall is predictable, underwhelming, and padded out by endless filler shots of people running around Vancouver pretending it’s “An Anonymous American Town.”
By the credits, you’re not thinking about justice, morality, or the nature of evil. You’re wondering why you didn’t just rewatch Se7en.
Legacy: A Precursor to Disaster
What makes Sanctimony fascinating (and by fascinating, I mean like a car crash filmed in slow motion) is that it’s one of Uwe Boll’s earliest films. It’s the embryo of his incompetence, the primordial ooze from which House of the Deadcrawled. You can see all his trademarks: incoherent editing, wooden performances, bargain-bin production values, and the subtlety of a jackhammer at a funeral.
Casper Van Dien, Michael Paré, and Eric Roberts all walked away from this, and somehow they kept getting work. Truly, Hollywood is merciful.
Final Thoughts: Sancti-Moan-y
Sanctimony is what happens when you give Uwe Boll a serial killer script and three actors who should’ve known better. It’s not scary. It’s not smart. It’s not even “so bad it’s good.” It’s just bad — like “why did I waste 90 minutes watching Casper Van Dien try to be Hannibal Lecter” bad.
If you’re looking for a psychological thriller with depth, style, and real menace, watch Se7en. If you want to laugh at the sheer incompetence of cinema, Sanctimony is your ticket. But be warned: the only thing getting murdered here is your time.
