‘Friends’ Star Directs Totally Bonkers ’True Crime’ Thriller

Courtesy of TIFF The pizza bomber case is among the wildest American crime sagas of this century.

In the early 2000s, a Pennsylvania pizza delivery man with a bomb strapped around his neck was forced to haphazardly rob a bank.

Once apprehended, the bomb detonated.

But that shocking moment was only the entry point to a series of violence and deception with one unwell woman at the helm.

All the gory details are recounted in Evil Genius , a new dark comedy that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and is directed by none other than Friends star Courteney Cox.

The unbelievable sequence of events lends itself easily to a film, given the drama that unfolded.

Led by The Act ’s Patricia Arquette as psychotic mastermind Marjorie, the film also stars Stranger Things ’ David Harbour as Bill, the man who can’t help but go to gruesome lengths, all for his love for her.

Stemming from Marjorie’s attempt at nabbing a lucrative inheritance from her father, the pizza bomber incident is the climactic end to a chain of violent crimes that involved multiple murders, a body in a freezer, and attempts by Marjorie to pin it all on her closest co-conspirators.

Or as the film’s opening disclaimer glibly puts it, “you can’t make this s--t up.

And mostly we didn’t.” Those details of the crime(s) are now the stuff of legend, all of it chronicled at length in Barbara Schroeder and Trey Borzillieri’s Netflix true crime docuseries of the same name, from which this film draws inspiration.

Where that viral sensation meticulously and grimly unfurled the exploits in slow-motion car crash fashion, here we sink into the grimiest aspects for the sake of laughs.

There are shotgun blasts to the head, hoarding, a steady stream of swear words, and gloopy Vienna sausage sludge.

In opting for bawdy humor before building intrigue or motivation, Cox’s film holds nothing back in terms of loud absurdity.

You just might wish it had—even a broad sensationalist like Ryan Murphy would call the film a bit much.