If you’re looking for a movie that will help you look at clean-cut actors in a new satanic light, believe the worst in all the people you meet and basically abandon all hope for humanity, Surveillance might do just the trick.

When I had heard that the movie was about two FBI agents trying to solve a case involving a serial killer, I was pretty excited—that’s exactly my cup of tea. I’m always on the lookout for something akin to Silence of the Lambs and have yet to find something of just that caliber.

The reviews for Surveillance dubbed it “disturbing,” “warped,” and a number of other could-be positive descriptions, and the movie took Best Actress and Best Director at the New York City Horror Film Festival; it also won best prize at the Festival de Cine de Sitges. So I thought, this has got to be one fantastic movie!

And the premise really is. It’s based on the idea that, when we’re on camera—or even just what we learn about a situation—humans tend to change our stories, sometimes quite drastically. And that’s where the horror begins. (Warning: spoilers ahead.)

There’s murder and mayhem, brutal and disturbing, as you might expect in a film about serial killers. However, there is no hero. No Clarice Starling, no Will Graham, no Alex Cross… The only potential heroes we have are bumbling, stereotyped small town policemen who are nearly as sadistic as the killers themselves—and all end up dead by the movie’s end.

There is absolutely no redeemable character in the film. One could argue that the drug addict is a changed woman before she is strangled to death; but is she really not just trying to save herself from being the next victim? The police station secretary also seems to be motherly and kind—but her concern for the victims really feels transparent, not genuine. And the little girl who is left standing after the chaos, who seems innocent enough, actually hugs one of the killers after she recognizes who she is and asks her not to leave her.

Sadistic.

And the killers themselves—the fake FBI agents played by Bill Pullman and Julia Ormond—are sick and creepy, sure, and I’m okay seeing Bill Pullman in such a light—but Ormond, who usually plays such caring roles, was difficult to watch. In fact, Kitt Kittridge was on the other night and I mused, “Don’t strangle and hump Kitt’s friend now, Julia.”

Call me an optimist, but I like to have some kind of a hero in a movie. I get establishing that everybody’s flawed, everybody has a rotten streak—that’s fine and dandy. But when you leave it without hope like that, I just walk away feeling so hollow and sick—which, I suppose, actually accomplishes the film’s goal in the first place.