I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Philip Markoff (Jake McDorman) is a top Boston University medical student beloved by his professor. He zeros in on Megan McAllister (Agnes Bruckner) and pushes to get married. He seems like the perfect guy on the surface but nobody sees the darkness beneath. He becomes obsessed with Craigslist and starts attacking the women on those ads with escalating violence. Police detectives Bennett (William Baldwin) investigates.The start is way too slow. The tension is too low at the start. There is basically no tension. This should a horror story or a dramatic thriller. There is nothing close to that here. These are all perfectly functional actors given rather bland material despite the scary subject matter. It's a movie of the week at best.

This is not a story that deserves a film adaptation, however the Lifetime network felt differently and produced a movie based on this very benign story, that captivated the nation. For those who are unaware, this is a true story that happened in Boston, five years ago. A Boston medical student, on the verge of getting married, spends his nights cruising Craigslist's exotic services page, in order to find woman he can humiliate, but the story takes a tragic turn when he accidentally kills one of them. The story made national headlines and people became obsessed with why such a smart, successful man, would do these terrible things. Usually, films that are based on real life events are the most compelling, but the Craigslist Killer is different, for the fact that he wasn't active for very long. Much of this movie is focused on the killer's normal life and relationship with his fiancée. It's a lot of romantic garbage and stuff about their relationship and in fact we don't see his dark side revealed until much later in the movie. There wasn't even an interesting police angle or manhunt for this guy, as the police simply traced his IP address and got his picture from security cameras. The acting was the only thing I enjoyed about this film as Jake McDorman is fantastic playing a man with two personas. His fiancée is played by the beautiful, Agnes Bruckner, who was also very good, if not a bit naive and obsessive. The true story may have captivated the nation, but the film about the Craigslist Killer has no bite and was just plain boring.

Made for TV films used to be a standard thing on Television. Every Sunday night you could catch a rather typical but entertaining film about spousal abuse or kidnappings or serial killers. Now films like that are almost exclusively saved for 'Lifetime' or 'AMC' or other cable networks. The Craigslist Killer attempts to tell a true crime story within a small budget and still entertain and tell a real story that happened. It is entertaining and it is decently made but the small budget shows and the performances are just alright making this decent but quite obviously slapped together in many ways.The film does really revolve and rely on the performance of Jake McDorman who plays medical student and killer Philip Markoff. His performance is okay but it is also rather cheesy at times and laughable when it should be serious and really twisted. He sort of lets down. Agnes Bruckner gives a much better performance as the completely oblivious girlfriend/fiancée. Her performance makes you feel for her and really understand her character. The supporting cast are passable but really add nothing that stands out including that of William Baldwin who is probably the most recognizable name in the film.As I said the movie is passable and watchable and reasonably entertaining. It certainly tells the story well enough and gets all the points across. I suppose the only downfall is that it is in the made for TV mentality which makes it that much less impressive that the current age of big screen thrillers. Still for a TV movie it is watchable. Director Stephen Kay is a TV director and he plays by the book. Tell the story, deal with the actors given. True crime fans will enjoy it. 6/10

Jake Mcdorman, besides being ridiculously attractive that he is unlike the real bad guy, did a decent job portraying the role of Philip Markoff in this movie by hiding his psychotic other personality from others for a significant amount of time. It was a role that he definitely knew how to act out without trying too hard which made it an overall good movie besides being easy on the eye. His TV wife however, was a bad actress, and honestly didn't have much charisma for the role. Perhaps a more well established actress could have been considered, who knows? He isn't a big actor either, but does a thorough job. I had a hunch that a movie like this would come out onto Lifetime just because Lacy Peterson and Natalie Holloway were also made into movies and were broadcasting on Lifetime. No big shocker there. Still this was a sexy thriller that i definitely enjoyed even though i normally don't watch Lifetime.