The Child I Never Was

It's a surprisingly artful and discrete film.

In the end Mr. Pieck and his intrepid lead actor piece together a constructive look at a lonely boy's damaged logic and its hideous results.

While the serial-killer sob story subgenre rarely yields a nuanced product, Kai S. Pieck's debut feature finds a plaintive, compelling route to the pathology of 1960s German child-killer Jrgen Bartsch.

This deeply creepy fictionalized effort is anything but an entertainment, nor can it be considered art.