Why are there movies about serial killers but not mass shooters?

I'm not sure if there are no movies on mass shooters I just haven't noticed any myself. I do notice serial killer movies though.. plenty of them.. The Nightstalker, Ed Gein, Gacy, Dahmer, Bundy has a ton..They may change the victims names but if it isn't a problem to make a serial killer movie why would it be any different to make a Columbine movie? And if the excuse is there are kids involved in Columbine, well Gacy killed teens, Bundy's last victim was a 12 year old girl. I don't think every shooting deserves a movie but a significant one like Columbine I think should've been made.

dereknocturnal wrote:

I'm not sure if there are no movies on mass shooters I just haven't noticed any myself. I do notice serial killer movies though.. plenty of them.. The Nightstalker, Ed Gein, Gacy, Dahmer, Bundy has a ton..They may change the victims names but if it isn't a problem to make a serial killer movie why would it be any different to make a Columbine movie? And if the excuse is there are kids involved in Columbine, well Gacy killed teens, Bundy's last victim was a 12 year old girl. I don't think every shooting deserves a movie but a significant one like Columbine I think should've been made.

I think there are a couple of different reasons.

Many of the serial killers profiled were from a long time ago. Right now there are so many mass shootings that it feels too close to home.

The perception of most mass shooters are that they were just crazy, lone wolfs with no depth. We know that is not the case. The perception of serial killers are a bit more nuanced.

Even in some true crime discussion boards there are plenty of off colored jokes about serial killers, memes etc... the "Feelin Cute" meme that went around had many infamous killers in it, and that made people laugh but if someone did one with Eric "Feelin Cute, might go to the library later. IDK" people would lose their crap....

"I'm Not Ashamed" is technically a Columbine movie, albeit an inaccurate one and one that many people who knew Rachel disagree with and "Dawn Anna" is kind of a Columbine movie but not really...


It is also interesting that there are more plays about mass shootings than films (there are a plethora of Columbine plays and one about Sandy Hook) I think 2 of the Columbine plays were Off-Broadway.

I've never watched I'm not ashamed fully...I've only watched the "Eric and Dylan segments" that are on youtube...but even those seemed sooo far fetched...like Eric and Dylan would catch Rachel in a hall and bitch about presentations in a class? It just seemed so stupid..but.. Netflix getting Zac Efron to play Ted Bundy was what woke me up to this like wow Efron will play Bundy in a film that was pathetically false but regardless he will do it but what "name" would sign up to be Eric Harris...Idk it was just weird to me..Eric and Dylan killed way less than Bundy but Bundy's name is somehow more suitable to act in cause he was in the 70's and E/D were 90s?? Just didn't make sense to me.

There more mainstream due to the fact they where really prevalent throughout the 60s until late 80s
Mass shootings hasn’t had the limelight as long

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] if know anything yea they got Zac Efron to show how charming he was in modern today times. But One thing I will agree with you on is the film was indeed inaccurate. But to be fairly honest it had pretty good acting 7.5/10

Narrative reasons.

A serial killer goes from murder to murder. The cops don't believe the murders are connected (except for that one guy no-one takes seriously yet (except for that one girl who has a crush on him)), but then they discover another body after the last one, it's so scary and tense, who's gonna be next, well you know whoever it is, they'll be perversely dismembered, now the cops believe it's a mass murderer, they turn the former laughing stock into their new guru, they get closer and closer, then the suspect turns out to be a dud, the real murderer gets away for the one last time... Then they catch him and everyone goes home.

Happy end.

The serial killer movie is filled with corpses from start to finish, sometimes spanning decades historically. It not only has enough corpses and mystery and drama to fill up a movie, but also the potential to end 'well'.

A mass shooter simply shoots a bunch of people at one particular moment, and then, sometimes, themselves. The only way to build a plot around this is to deal with what leads up to the shooting. There is really no room for plot twists or mindfucks. It's just fluff until the actual shooting everyone expects takes place. There is no entering dark cellars and finding skulls, bones and decomposing/mutilated bodies, let alone a scared-out-of-their-fucking-mind, mostly female survivors the murderer has not managed to disfigure yet.

And there is no sense of justice as the credits start rolling, although the shooter is dead, because they did not kill or mutilate anyone for 70 or 80 minutes, except for that ending which was in fact la pointe de la sauce. Also, if you build a plot around what led the movie star to shoot into a crowd of people, you'll end up encouraging sympathy for them, because one way or another, they'll come off as desperate and poor souls who had nothing to lose.

patogen wrote:

Narrative reasons.

A serial killer goes from murder to murder. The cops don't believe the murders are connected (except for that one guy no-one takes seriously yet (except for that one girl who has a crush on him)), but then they discover another body after the last one, it's so scary and tense, who's gonna be next, well you know whoever it is, they'll be perversely dismembered, now the cops believe it's a mass murderer, they turn the former laughing stock into their new guru, they get closer and closer, then the suspect turns out to be a dud, the real murderer gets away for the one last time... Then they catch him and everyone goes home.

Happy end.

The serial killer movie is filled with corpses from start to finish, sometimes spanning decades historically. It not only has enough corpses and mystery and drama to fill up a movie, but also the potential to end 'well'.

A mass shooter simply shoots a bunch of people at one particular moment, and then, sometimes, themselves. The only way to build a plot around this is to deal with what leads up to the shooting. There is really no room for plot twists or mindfucks. It's just fluff until the actual shooting everyone expects takes place. There is no entering dark cellars and finding skulls, bones and decomposing/mutilated bodies, let alone a scared-out-of-their-fucking-mind, mostly female survivors the murderer has not managed to disfigure yet.

And there is no sense of justice as the credits start rolling, although the shooter is dead, because they did not kill or mutilate anyone for 70 or 80 minutes, except for that ending which was in fact la pointe de la sauce. Also, if you build a plot around what led the movie star to shoot into a crowd of people, you'll end up encouraging sympathy for them, because one way or another, they'll come off as desperate and poor souls who had nothing to lose.

This. It's hard to make a movie about a mass shooter and the few that we already have never achieved mainstream appeal.

Remember Elephant? A big steaming turd of artsy-fartsy cinematic bullshit:

I feel like if a movie about mass shooters were to come out now, everyone would be complaining about how it's glorifying the situation and how people are going to be inspired to commit a shooting. It's like walking on eggshells compared to creating a serial killer one, in my opinion. I actually really like Zero Day (2003) and think it's underrated and done well.

LPorter101 wrote:

Remember Elephant? A big steaming turd of artsy-fartsy cinematic bullshit:

I couldn't get through Elephant at all. So boring.

* Elephant
* Zero Day
* Bang Bang You’re Dead
* We Need to Talk About Kevin (also a novel)
* Beautiful Boy (did not like this one at all)
* Heart of America
* Home room

Also Stalking Laura, based on the workplace mass shooting by Richard Farley

Does anyone have a link to be able to access “I’m Not Ashamed?”

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] - Polytechnique (2009)



a film about the Ecole Polytechnique rampage by Marc Lèpine

Time is a critical factor in these things. Any one who makes these things has to show sensitivity to the families and the closer to the event the more traumatised they are. For the reasons above they suit a documentary style better because you can cover the factual stuff better than with a dramatic reconstruction. There will be more of them in the next 50 years should shootings continue to be a hot political topic and people involved are more able to talk publicly as time passes.

true_crime wrote:

* Elephant
* Zero Day
* Bang Bang You’re Dead
* We Need to Talk About Kevin (also a novel)
* Beautiful Boy (did not like this one at all)
* Heart of America
* Home room

Also Stalking Laura, based on the workplace mass shooting by Richard Farley

Does anyone have a link to be able to access “I’m Not Ashamed?”

*Rampage (Uwe Boll)

I feel like a main part of it is that serial killers don't exactly have copycats in the same way school shooters do. I also think that if dramatizations of school/mass shootings were made in the same way they're made about serial killers, people will cause controversy because its 'promoting' or 'glamorizing' their actions. It's breeding a new generation of of shooters, it's going to inspire new people, and only add onto the twenty three-year-old blueprints made by Columbine. A big part of this is also how people are able to separate themselves from serial killers but they can't do the same for shooters. Serial killers are kind of rare but we can clearly see that shootings aren't. It's easy to talk about serial killers because chances are, the average person isn't going to be affected by them. There's nothing to debate about them like there is with shooters. So, it's so much easier to make movies about them. The fear of the 'monster next door' has shifted to the 'monster in class' and until that changes again, there won't be a a mainstream, popular, positively publicized movie or documentary about a school shooting. People aren't afraid of Ted Bundy anymore, they're afraid of Eric Harris.

Also, there's no story in it. Most big, mainstream shooters kill themselves (Columbine, Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech). There's no big plot twist where the police were just so close to catching the killer but they made on fatal mistake. There's no happy ending where the killer is caught and brought to justice. Basically, there is no rise, there is no fall; there is no plot.

hope this makes sense.

some movies about Richard Benjamin Spack 

*Violated Angels (1967) Fictionalized version of Speck's murder spree set in Japan

*Born For Hell (1976) Fictionalized version of Speck's murder spree set in Northern Ireland

*Chicago Massacre: Richard Speck (2007) Movie based on the Speck's murder spree