Fiction
People bemoan this film for innaccuracies. It's NOT a documentary; it's simply inspired by a real-life mad-man. That's it. Given that, I found it pretty compelling.
Just my 2 cents...
Peace.
This is a fictionalization of a true person? Next you are going to tell me Dahmer vs Gacy never happened! LOL
The movie states it right in the beginning that this is a fictional story base on a real person. It seems to be a newish genre with movies like this, Dahmer vs Gacy and whatever the movie is about Dahmer and his dad.
Insert favorite movie dialogue line here.
I think the problem is the fact that it's even called BTK, and the main character is named after the BTK killer. Dahmer Vs Gacy isn't the same. That's clearly supposed to be fiction. When I saw the name and description of this movie on cable, I assumed it was actually about the history of BTK. I didn't expect it to be a mostly-fictional movie loosely inspired by the concept of the BTK killer.
If you want to make a BTK movie, make it real. Sure, you can take some liberties and change things up to make it more of a movie and less of a documentary, but just having a serial killer that ties people up and kills them could be another movie. It could be a decent movie if it was a completely fictional story with no ties to any specific serial killer.
BTK killed 10 people over the course of 15-20 years. This guy is just killing people left and right over a short time period with no pattern, except that a few of them didn't obey his Compliance Officer "authority." The real Dennis Rader stalked his victims, planned things out, broke into their homes and bound/tortured/killed them. The one in the movie is out on the street in the middle of the day and whacks a girl in the back of the head and pushes her into the back of his van. With his pastor walking up to him 5 seconds later.
When you change too much of the facts, it's probably time to change the name of the character/movie. He had a son, and was his cub scout leader... In the movie, he pretends to be a scout leader because of his resentment towards his wife for only giving him daughters.
With all of the changes they made to the facts, they might as well have called him Denise Rader and made BTK a woman. What they did with this movie is like making a movie called "Hitler" and it's about a Japanese guy with the name "Adolf Hitler" that believes the Japanese are the "Master Race" who invades South Korea and wants to kill them all because they don't have pure Japanese blood.