2025’s ‘Ed Kemper’ Is An Early Aughts Throwback [Murder Made Fiction Podcast]

Throughout January, Murder Made Fiction podcast is examining the killers that are being interviewed on season one of David Fincher‘s Mindhunter. This ties into our Patreon episode-by-episode discussions, while also allowing us to cover a few of the killers that we haven’t discussed in detail, such as Edmund Kemper.

Kemper is obviously one of the big characters on the first season of the series – and for good reason. He’s huge, and he’s useful for the profiling study that the John Douglas proxy, Holden Ford, is constructing. More than that, though, Kemper is eloquent, personable, and even helpful.

This doesn’t entirely gel with the vision of the serial killer we see in Chad Ferrin‘s 2025 film of the same name, Ed Kemper.

Written by Stephen Johnston, the screenwriter of 2000’s Ed Gein (or In The Light of The Moon), last year’s true crime adaptation is a straightforward look at Kemper’s major crime spree between 1972 and 1973, in which he murdered six College students, earning him the nickname “The Co-Ed Killer”.

Johnston’s non-linear story also jumps around in time to when Kemper (played by Brandon Kirk) was initially released from a psychiatric facility after killing his grandparents; it also focuses heavily on his emotionally abusive childhood with single mother Clarnell (Susan Priver).

Despite solid practical FX and a committed performance by Kirk, however, everything about the film feels antiquated and familiar. Johnston’s script focuses at least half of its attention on the murders, but the women aren’t characters; they’re simply bodies to objectify and mutilate.

This leaves the rest of the film to zero in on Kemper’s relationship with his mother. Whereas Kirk is brooding, silent, and interior, however, Priver is hysterical, shrill, and over the top. It’s like they’re in completely different films…and not in a good way.

Listen to the discussion below about why this throwback true crime film is a miss, particularly for a film made last year.

And if you want even more Murder Made Fiction, be sure to check out the pod’s Patreon feed, where we have 127 hours of coverage, including the aforementioned episode-by-episode coverage of Mindhunter season 1.