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  • Complete Monster: Edward "Ed" Carver began his prolific killing spree with the rape and murder of a little girl, which he later followed up with a string of sexual tortures, murders, and mutilations that he would tape to revisit. Taking interest in a college girl named Cheryl Dempsey, Ed viciously murders her boyfriend and abducts her, holding her captive and brainwashing her into becoming his Sex Slave and accomplice over the course of several years. With the public beginning to catch wind of his killings, Ed starts killing prostitutes under the persona of the Water Street Butcher so that he can continue his murderous rampage while lulling the public into a false sense of security. Framing police officer James Foley for the murders of the prostitutes, Ed kills several more women as Foley is put to death, eventually giving up his location and the now-brainwashed Cheryl, desecrating her grave after she's Driven to Suicide to further hurt her family and to defile her corpse.
  • Diagnosed by the Audience: It's never really made clear what exactly is wrong with the killer. He displays traits of sadism, antisocial personality disorder, and narcissism, but is implied to have the capacity for remorse, and as such, goes out of his way to distance himself from the reality of his murders by employing theatricality in his tapes. He also deliberately invokes this to confuse the public into thinking his killings are unrelated.
  • Hype Backlash: The fact that the film took so long to get an official DVD release and had its theatrical release cancelled caused the film to get a lot of hype due to it being shrouded in mystery. Several who finally saw it after years of waiting felt like the film in no way lived up to its reputation, finding it more boring than disturbing.
  • Memetic Mutation: An animated GIF showing the Butcher slowly creeping towards the English woman on all fours commonly makes appearances on horror- or paranormal-themed message boards.
  • Moral Event Horizon: The Water Street Butcher's killings start off as standard fare for a Serial Killer movie, but the graphic physical and mental torture that he inflicts on his "slave" is freakin' terrifying.
  • Narm:
    • The killer's angry growling (especially in the Mind Rape scenes) can be somewhat jarring.
    • The balloon scene. Specifically, he hired a hooker to blow up a balloon and start bouncing on it, then asks her calmly to pop it. When she questions him, he yells at the top of his lungs, "POP IT!"
  • Paranoia Fuel:
    • The film encourages the notion that the killer's vanity means he's probably right there in the theater watching it with you.
    • "At any given time, there are somewhere between 25 and 50 active serial killers in America alone. It is really a much bigger problem than most people realize."
  • Tear Jerker: This is one of the few movies where you get to see all the lives ruined because of the serial killer.
    • Though years had passed since her death, the parents of Ed's first victim clearly hadn't moved on, with her mother breaking down in tears and the father calmly asking the cameraman to stop filming.
    • James Foley's son, Hank, effectively had his life ruined because his father was framed for the Water Street Butcher murders, and never truly vindicated because the news that he was framed got bumped off the front page because of 9/11. Before that, Hank was truly convinced that his father was actually the Butcher. Though given the release of the movie, there's a chance that he might finally be vindicated and Hank may be able to move forward with his life.
    • While also Nightmare Fuel, the final interview with Cheryl. After eight years of some of the most brutal tortures imaginable in addition to brainwashing, she's become so broken and can barely answer any questions, and breaks down mid-interview. Shortly after, she killed herself. It's further implied that her disappearance may have even impacted the lives of her friends.
  • The Woobie: Cheryl. Poor, poor, Cheryl. The abuse she suffered was worse than any of the Butcher's actual murders.

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