Leland starts his narrative by flashing back to the scene of the crime, in which he depicts his interpretation of killing an intellectually disabled boy name Ryan Pollard, who just so happens to be his girlfriend Becky’s younger brother. Initiated by Leland’s teacher in the juvenile facility, Pearl Madison, asks Leland to keep a journal as a way of trying to understand his motives behind what is a seemingly senseless murder and provides the context of the entire movie. Although the idea of the journal was to partially to help Leland come to terms with his crime, a portion of it was to selfishly advance Pearl’s own personal achievement of becoming an accomplished writer - and he views Leland’s story as the ticket to his success. Additionally, numerous characters are presented throughout the movie, all of whom are in some way affected in the aftermath of the murder, essentially providing the background for possible explanations to be further evaluated. However, the movie never clearly …show more content…
It would be too easy to label Leland as a monster – a killer - but that isn’t what the movie portrays. Instead, the movie shows its viewers an intelligent, yet introverted and somewhat sensitive, teenager that represents a typical and average young man that could be found within any one of our communities. That’s a scary thought, especially when some of the most notorious killers were labeled as being normal or average. In many of these cases, the individuals closest to the guilty party say that they are in disbelief what the person has done or it’s not like the person they once knew. According to Kassin, Fein, & Marcus, these reactions distinctly follow the implicit personality theory and that the “network of assumptions that we hold about relationships among various types of