“You’re my only friend,” serial killer Fred West tells Janet Leach, his assigned “appropriate adult.”
Because the story has slowly and carefully built to demonstrate how the killer’s crazed personality could be charming, because Fred shows an uncanny understanding of Janet’s neediness, and because the first-rate acting of Dominic West (“The Wire”) as Fred West, and Emily Watson (“Breaking the Waves”) as Janet Leach, this preposterous claim doesn’t seem so far-fetched.
In “Appropriate Adult,” a fine, understated thriller premiering on Sundance Channel at 11 p.m. Saturday, the horrors are transmitted directly to the viewer’s central nervous system without passing before the eyes. That is, there’s very little graphic violence onscreen. It’s referenced in grisly dialog instead.
“And I cut her head off, well, I closed her eyes first…”
A deranged Fred West matter-of-factly recounts how he killed his daughter, telling police about that and other killings.
The screenplay by Neil McKay relates the true story from 1994 of British serial killer West and his relationship with his “appropriate adult,” Janet Leach.
His mind is crazily twisted, and Leach, who is assigned to sit by and listen, displays sickened shock in closeups. No grisly action required.
The loaded, awkward label of “appropriate adult” is repeated early and often. Leach, an unassuming social-worker in training, served as a witness, sitting in on police interrogations in the capacity required in the UK meant to protect the rights of juveniles and vulnerable (or possibly, learning disabled) adults.
Watson is mesmerizing and it’s the most chilling performance yet from West.
“Nothin more hurtful than someone sayin’ you don’t love your kids,” West says.
Leach, a Gloucester housewife, finds herself entranced and repelled by the details. As media outlets offer Leach cash for information, as her family is disrupted under the shadow cast by the case, the outlines of pure evil are revealed.
Unlike so many TV treatments that put revolting amounts of blood front and center, “Appropriate Adult” unspools an engrossing psychological mystery only suggesting the images, probing the irredeemably dark mind of the killer.
As Leach visits the suspect’s home, meets his children and becomes entwined with the life of the deranged West, he begins to trust her and to divulge information.
Watson reflects the audience’s distress as her character takes in the horrific information and takes verbal abuse from those involved (“occupational hazard,” the police observe).
West, at times unrecognizable in frizzy hair and prosthetic teeth, manages to be at once despicable and pathetic — and occasionally even charming — as the accused killer.
Leach ultimately sat in on 40 interviews as West recounted the horrid details of the Cromwell Street murders — in what became one of the biggest police investigations in British history.
Joanne Ostrow: 303-954-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com
