For years, all I could remember was a figure in the woods stabbing someone. It was so simple, and so cold. No fancy camera work. No overdramatic score. None of the sound effects you’re accustomed to hearing during these moments. Just the hollow sound of a knife entering and departing its destination over and over.

A quick Google search and I had my answer. The movie was 1995’s Citizen X. An HBO made-for-TV movie that must have been aired constantly at the time. They were very proud of this one, as they should have been. It’s a strange, sweeping movie. Part political and historical drama and part grizzly crime film. After re-watching, I realized there was a reason it stuck with me.

Citizen X is one of the most underrated serial killer movies ever made.

(Unfortunately) Based on a True Story

Based on Robert Cullen’s book The Killer Department, Citizen X tells the story of one of the most sadistic serial killers of all time, Andrei Chikatilo (played by Jeffrey DeMunn) or “The Butcher of Rostov.” Over the span of twelve years, Chikatilo killed at least 53 people. Most of which were under the age of seventeen. He would find children and those with mental disabilities at Soviet Union train stations and lure them into the woods. There he would sexually assault, murder and mutilate their bodies in unthinkable ways.

In the film, a forensic analyst named Viktor Burakov (played to perfection by Stephen Rea) is tasked with capturing the killer despite having no experience as a detective. He’s given almost no resources as a committee of Soviet bureaucrats (including an absolutely terrifying Joss Ackland as Bondarchuk) believe serial killers to be a “decadent Western phenomenon.” They refuse to publicize the vast amount of children being found mutilated in the woods for fear of looking like they’re not in control. They also blame the problem on men practicing homosexuality in the country. They use the search for the killer as an excuse to find and prosecute homosexuals rather than catch the killer murdering their children.

As the years pass and the body count rises, Burakov begins to have a mental breakdown as he’s helpless and stonewalled by idiocy and political roadblocks at every turn. He wakes up in the middle of the night holding his own children and sobbing. He openly weeps in council meetings. The only member of the committee on his side is the man who hired him, Colonel Mikhail Fetisov (Donald Sutherland). He is inspired by Burakov and the two create a bond throughout the years as they tirelessly search for the killer despite the obnoxious and dangerous roadblocks presented by the politics around them.

The Disturbing Depiction of an Unthinkable Serial Killer

Chikatilo’s home life is depicted about how any psychologist would suspect. He’s a timid and cowering man, hunched over and eking his way through life. His wife demeans him both in front of his children and in the bedroom where he fails to perform. His bosses and coworkers intimidate and bully him. Usually these events are followed by him heading to a train station to find a new victim on whom to take out his repressed rage. There are many throughout the film.

Citizen X is fascinating in how it deals with presenting the graphic nature of these heinous crimes. It’s more disturbing because of what it doesn’t show. Scenes where he’s talking to a young boy followed by a close up of his mouth full of blood and flesh moments later are far more haunting than being forced to watch what took place in between. The murders that are shown are disturbing in their own right due to the aforementioned lack of overproduction. There’s a bitter, hollow realism to it that’s accentuated by the backdrop of the cold Russian scenery and lonely woods where these crimes take place. Everything in Citizen X feels all too real.

Sometimes it’s not the things we see but the things we hear. In the opening, when the first mass grave site is found, Burakov goes body to body recording his autopsy findings. In a gruesome verbal montage we hear the blow-by-blow details of the atrocities committed against each of Chikatilo’s victims as Burakov wipes tears from his face. These aren’t things that are easy to hear. The spoken words are more graphic than any gruesome scene in any Rob Zombie film.

A Satisfying Conclusion

Citizen X takes you down a surprising road of emotion; from obvious anger over these crimes to frustration at the way politics allowed them to continue. Everything is just so dark and grim as you watch body after body pile up and idiot after idiot let it happen. When the levee finally breaks for our characters, it’s extremely emotional. To watch Donald Sutherland as Colonel Fetisov break the news to Burakov that he’s finally in charge and able to help him catch the killer and be seen for his absolute iron will and resolve is a cathartic release for a very human character we’ve watched go to absolute hell and back. It’s truly one of the most underrated and earned character moments I’ve ever seen and will absolutely bring you to tears.

When the killer is finally captured, he refuses to confess and in another idiotic political loophole, will be released soon if they cannot convince him to admit to his crimes. Burakov and Fetisov bring in Psychiatrist Dr. Bukhanovsky (the great Max Von Sydow) to read the profile he created for the killer to Chikatilo.

Eventually, Chikatilo (with a fantastic and thankless performance from DeMunn that took a lot of guts), overwhelmed by the accurate accounts, breaks down and confesses. While doing so, he describes the sexual nature of his crimes. Including the abrasions on his own genitals from having to hurt himself to “achieve release.”

In a surprising ending, we quickly see Chikatilo marched into a shower room and told to look forward as a gun is put to his head. The gun goes off and in the absence of light the words “The End” coldly grace the screen. A movie that had been extremely matter of fact, void of bells, whistles or any sort of glamorization, ends the way it had lived.

Far closer in brutal earnestness to a movie like Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer than recent serial killer stories, Citizen X deserves to be mentioned among the best of all time.