This film is based upon the 1989 non-fiction book The Riverman: Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer by Robert D. Keppel and William J. Birnes. Many have claimed this book actually inspired the Harris novel The Silence of the Lambs. However this is not true. This book was actually released after Harris's Silence novel. So unless Harris had a time machine, yeah, no. Harris may have indeed been influenced by this real life story from seeing or hearing about it in the press or elsewhere, or perhaps from reading about the FBI who did very similar interviews in the 1970's and 80's as is shown in the TV series Mindhunter. Nonetheless, contrary to popular rumor, SilenceOTL is not based on the book that this is based on. This film is actually pretty good if you're interested in Bundy or The Green River Killer. The film essentially becomes more about Bundy than the GRK, but nonetheless we do learn a good bit about both. This film, like The Deliberate Stranger has a good bit of very real Bundy-esque truths within it. To some degree, we definitely are able to get inside his head if we dare, and into Ridgeway's to some degree as well. Keppel after all was a Homicide Detective who worked both cases, and he became known as quite an educated profiler in understanding serial killers. Much of this is shown here. Overall the film is quite grim and fairly brutal, especially for a TV movie. It's more psychologically grim and brutal than visually, though it has some grim visuals as well. If you're interested and you can stomach this kind of fare, it's well worth a look. 7/10.
Review of The Riverman
