Alexandre Moors’S Blue Caprice is a chilling film. This first time writer/director’s film imagines the backstory to the 23 days of terror in the Washington Metropolitan area instigated in October 2002 by John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, better known as the D.C. Snipers. This film is haunting, and right from its opening, you know Moors has created a dramatization of events that will leave you feeling depressed, and he doesn’t let up. The atmosphere is cold, distant, and dreadful. Moors’s exploration of revenge, for example, uncovers how deep it cuts into the spirit and what revenge manifests in the human psyche once it is enacted.

Muhammad (Isaiah Washington) and Malvo (Tequan Richmond)

What is alarming about this film is the danger many of our teenagers encounter when the usual suspects of societal systems are breached, and therefore leaves them open for anyone to facilitate their coming of age. I’m talking about family, church, and/or community. Without these systems and healthy guardianship, the intense need to belong makes them susceptible to forces that will destroy them. Isaiah Washington gives a superb performance as Muhammad, and he makes seamless his character’s transition from concerned surrogate father to seasoned sociopath. Tequan Richmond as Malvo illicits some sympathy because all the while you are thinking his parental abandonment at the age of 15 made him vulnerable to Muhammad’s abuse and manipulation.

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