About halfway through Jeffrey Darling’s crime thriller, He Went That Way, I had to consistently fight through the anger to remind myself that this genre-mashup is “just a movie.” At this point in the film, 19-year-old serial killer Bobby Falls had just made good on a promise and provided a kind gesture to his latest captive Jim Goodwin. It’s the kind of scene that felt emotionally manipulative; I felt some cheesy speech about how people could change was right around the corner. Thankfully, this never came to pass, but the film’s quality didn’t get any better.
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Zachary Quinto stars as the celebrity animal handler, Jim Goodwin, who travels across the country to Chicago with his precious cargo, the famous TV chimpanzee Spanky. During his journey, he picks up hitchhiker Bobby Falls (Jacob Elordi), who is on a mission to reunite with his girlfriend in Michigan to prove that he has done great things with his life since their breakup. Bobby also happens to be a serial killer—the kind who enjoys briefly tormenting his victims right before taking their lives. Of course, somewhere deep within Bobby is compassion waiting to be unleashed when the right person comes along.

At least that’s what we are supposed to believe in He Went That Way, which is based on a true event. In 1964, serial killer Larry Lee Ranes seemingly takes a liking towards one of his captives during a three-day voyage across the United States. The film takes place during the Vietnam War, and humanity was at a low, which screenwriter Evan M. Wiener makes clear right from the beginning. The creative liberties taken throughout the film are also quite obvious, even if there wasn’t a “this really (mostly) happened” warning at the start of the feature.

He Went That Way is pretty much a dumpster fire from start to finish. Had it not been for Quinto’s charmingly sweet character, this could have easily received a walkout from me. The script takes on too much and begins to feel like a plethora of random ideas thrown together with the hope that something coherent comes out on the other end. To make matters worse, Quinto and Elordi simply aren’t on the same acting playing field. While their characters danced around each other in a power play game of cat and mouse, it is Quinto whose acting skills are leaps and bounds better than Elordi’s here. One could blame the script for such an unbalance in performances, but this material is perhaps beyond the latter’s capabilities.

Starling’s crime thriller also changes tone at a moment’s notice, which often yields small glimpses of a good or even great film. But presenting this story as some budding bromance that is capable of changing even the most psychotic of minds is quite off-putting, and it’s where the film goes south. Not only is the film a wasted opportunity to discuss mental health (especially for the era), but it also fails to show the consequences of some very questionable actions (or inactions). Emotional manipulations and poor rationalizations aside, He Went That Way makes very little sense and barely scrapes by on its entertaining premise.

According to Quinto’s Jim Goodwin, “there’s no wrong time to make the right decision.” But throughout He Went That Way, that seemed to escape the filmmakers’ minds as nearly every decision felt wrong. Whether it was intended for the script to come off as a cross-country bromance adventure is a question that may never be answered. However, the choice to sideline important topics like poor mental health to shoehorn in a desperate message about how even the worst type of person can change isn’t a mistake, it’s intentional. Someone out there will enjoy this film, but my best guess is that they’ll forget it the very next day.

He Went That Way premiered at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival. The film is 95 minutes long and not yet rated.