Some horror films set out to entertain. Others try to terrify. And then there are films like The Killer is Still Among Us(1986), which aim to “warn the youth” about real-life dangers but instead stumble face-first into the cinematic equivalent of an after-school special written by Ed Wood. Camillo Teti’s Italian horror-thriller insists that it is based on the terrifying true crimes of the Monster of Florence, but what we actually get is a lethargic mash-up of criminology lectures, séance bloopers, and a heroine so gullible she makes Scooby-Doo’s Shaggy look like Sherlock Holmes.
This is less a horror film than a clumsy PowerPoint presentation where someone forgot half the slides, then taped a séance scene to the end just to hit a runtime.
The Plot: Scooby-Doo Meets Law & Order (and Everyone Forgets the Script)
The opening scene is classic giallo: a couple at lover’s lane, brutal double murder, knife, mutilation, etc. It’s sleazy, shocking, and—unfortunately—the high point of the movie. From there, we follow Christiana Marelli (Mariangela D’Abbraccio), a criminology student writing her thesis on the Monster of Florence. Because nothing says “fun night at the movies” like watching someone research a paper.
Christiana pokes around, interviews people, suspects her boyfriend Alex, and generally flails her way through the plot like a Final Girl with no sense of danger. Her investigation is mostly a series of people telling her to stop investigating, and her response is to… keep investigating. A bartender who tries to help her ends up hanging around (literally, from a rope). Her boyfriend is absent every time there’s a killing, which for anyone else would be a red flag, but for Christiana is just a “quirky coincidence.”
By the time we get to the séance scene—where the medium magically live-streams a murder happening elsewhere and gets a matching throat wound—you realize the film has completely detached itself from reality. And then comes the kicker: the ending, where Christiana sits in a movie theatre, relieved her boyfriend isn’t the killer, only for the camera to ominously pan to a random guy sitting behind her. Cue the on-screen message: “The killer is still among us.”
This is supposed to be chilling. It’s not. It’s like watching an unfinished Unsolved Mysteries episode directed by someone who ran out of film stock halfway through the climactic reveal.
The Cast: Criminology Students and Cardboard Cutouts
Mariangela D’Abbraccio does her best with Christiana, but “wide-eyed confusion” can only carry you so far. Her character is meant to be a determined young academic, but comes across more like a grad student who wandered into the wrong building and decided to cosplay Nancy Drew.
Giovanni Visentin as Alex the Boyfriend is so bland he makes oatmeal look spicy. He’s supposed to radiate suspicion, but instead he radiates the energy of a man who forgot why he walked into the kitchen. Everyone else in the cast—professors, cops, mediums, random townsfolk—might as well be mannequins rented from a department store liquidation sale.
The killer, of course, is never revealed, which is either a brilliant commentary on real-life unsolved cases or (more likely) because no one on set could be bothered to write an ending.
The Horror: More Lecture Hall Than Slasher Hall
Here’s the thing: for a film based on one of Italy’s most infamous serial killers, The Killer is Still Among Us is remarkably boring. The actual murders are few and far between, shot with all the finesse of a high school stage play. Instead, we spend most of the runtime in classrooms, apartments, or watching Christiana fumble through microfiche like she’s in a rejected library training video.
Even the stalker scenes are limp. A prowler tries to break into Christiana’s apartment, but the sequence has all the suspense of waiting for your pizza delivery. The séance scene briefly perks things up with its accidental camp, but by then you’re too numb to care.
The film is also oddly moralizing, warning viewers about the dangers of premarital sex, going out at night, and basically doing anything fun. It ends with a literal PSA message that the film was made to “warn young people” and “help the police.” Which is rich, considering no one in this movie seems remotely capable of helping anyone, least of all the audience.
The Style: A Beige Giallo
Italian horror is usually stylish, even when it’s trash. Dario Argento gave us neon nightmares, Mario Bava painted with blood-red shadows, Lucio Fulci served eyeball trauma on a silver platter. Camillo Teti, on the other hand, serves beige.
The cinematography is flat, the editing is clunky, and the atmosphere is nonexistent. Even the killer’s presence—supposed to be menacing, shadowy, iconic—is reduced to generic gloved hands and offscreen violence. At times it feels less like a giallo and more like a made-for-TV true crime reenactment, the kind that would air at 3 p.m. between soap operas and low-budget detergent commercials.
The only remotely stylish touch is the séance sequence, which flirts with surrealism before collapsing into unintentional comedy.
The Ending: The World’s Most Passive Jump Scare
Let’s talk about that ending again. Christiana, convinced her boyfriend isn’t the killer, sits down at the theatre. Some random guy sits behind her. Title card: “The killer is still among us.” Roll credits.
That’s not suspense—that’s lazy. It’s like the filmmakers literally gave up mid-scene. Imagine if Psycho ended not with Norman Bates revealed, but just a text slide saying, “Eh, maybe your neighbor is the killer, who knows? Stay safe!” It’s less a climax and more an accidental shrug.
And then comes the message: the movie is meant to “warn” the youth. About what, exactly? Not to have sex in cars? Not to date men who conveniently vanish during murders? Not to watch bad movies that insult your intelligence? If so, mission accomplished.
The Killer is Still Among Us… and So Is the Boredom
The real tragedy of The Killer is Still Among Us isn’t the murders—it’s the wasted potential. The Monster of Florence was a chilling, real-life serial killer whose crimes haunted Italy for decades. In the hands of a competent filmmaker, this could’ve been an unsettling meditation on paranoia, fear, and obsession. Instead, we got a beige student film with an identity crisis: part giallo, part PSA, part séance comedy sketch.
What lingers isn’t horror but tedium. The scariest thing about this movie is realizing you spent 90 minutes watching it when you could’ve been doing literally anything else, like reorganizing your sock drawer or watching paint dry.
Final Thoughts: A Killer Waste of Time
The Killer is Still Among Us tries to be socially responsible, but ends up socially irresponsible by wasting the time of everyone who watches it. Its mix of dull procedural, limp suspense, and patronizing message makes it one of the most misguided Italian horror films of the 1980s—a decade that gave us some real competition in the “what the hell am I watching?” department.
So, is the killer still among us? Maybe. But more importantly, so is this movie. And that’s the real crime.
