The killer is already inside the house. The woman doesn’t know it yet. She puts down her groceries and calls out, but only the sinister sound of Roxy Music’s nightmarish song “In Every Dream Home a Heartache” can be heard in response.
That, and the sound of a door shaking under the strain of a rope tied to the knob.
She makes her way down the hall, calling out “Honey?” She sees the door shake. She opens it, and a man collapses forward—rope around his throat, a cheap kewpie-doll mask on his face, a woman’s slip on his body.
She runs away, gasping, in slow motion. He calls after her, saying he was just playing around. He’s not her killer, then. He’s her husband.
This is how Mindhunter returns after nearly two years—though only a week has passed in the world of the show. Right away we see the series, created by Joe Penhall and directed here by David Fincher, is leaning into its strengths.
Season One was an aggressively mixed bag, its deeply compelling serial-killer scenes interspersed with interpersonal drama that you’d need a Behavior Science Unit to try and make sense of. So opening things up with a visit to the BTK Killer, who for the first time is brought to the attention of the pioneering agents of the BSU later in the episode, makes sense.
What’s exciting is how the interpersonal stuff seems to have played catch-up during the time off. For the first time, Holt McAllany’s Agent Bill Tench, Jonathan Groff’s Agent Holden Ford, and Anna Torv’s Dr. Wendy Carr all feel like thoughtfully drawn characters whose problems, and responses to those problems, are those of real people, not just styrofoam packing peanuts shoved into the story at random to pad out the time between visits to psychopaths.
Tags: decider, horror, mindhunter, reviews, TV, TV reviews