Karla

Karla: Hard to believe a movie about the sin-sational Karla Homolka could be so bad. Karla was a seventeen-year-old Canadian cutie when she met twenty-three year old pretty boy Paul Bernardo, a young man of no talent--uh, that is, except for serial rape. Anyway, for some reason, Karla fell hard for Bernardo. Well, even the briefest consideration of Karla’s and Paul’s life together, in which they became Canada’s most famous rapists/murderers (at least, until pig farmer Robert Picton was pulled from British Columbia’s mud in 2002), will lead one to conclude a shared passion for sexual sadism was the reason Karla *fell in love* with Paul. But in this artless little flick, Karla is a psychological zero. Video game characters are more 3-dimensional. The only thing seeming genuine about her character is her appetite for sex. . .other than that, her participation in the rapes and murders of her little sister Tammy and two high school girls, the vicious beatings she endured from Bernardo (all mirroring the *real life facts* of the case) have the appearance of random events she just happened to chance upon, and then stayed to watch/endure/participate in out of a very morbid S&M curiosity.

The script doesn’t even suggest Karla went along with the kidnappings, tortures, rapes and murders because of the beatings Bernardo gave her (which the very few who supported her in her legal proceedings suggested). Indeed, in one scene a kidnapped schoolgirl, who has just watched Bernardo give Karla yet another pummeling, asks: “Why do you stay?” After the prerequisite *dramatic pause,* Karla sadly, wearily responds: “You don’t understand. . .” Uh, that’s for sure!

At best, the movie sort of implies Karla participated in the schoolgirl rapes and murders because she really liked Paul, and since raping schoolgirls was what Paul was really into, well, she had to go along, because that’s what wives do--they support their husbands. Karla rapes and murders the way some wives watch football with their hubbies--they have no interest in the game, but they sit there politely on the sofa and say *that’s nice* when the home team scores a touchdown.

While not overly graphic, the movie is genuinely lurid, so it may provide cheap thrills to those who enjoy watching half-dressed high school girls beg and cry. . .

It must also be noted the actress playing Karla (somebody named Laura Prepon) is terrible. Apparently this Prepon person was a television sitcom *star*--which might explain why she exhibits the limited range of an amateur thespian used to playing to a laugh track.