"Psycho Killer"

6 June 2025

4 mins 23s

Psycho Killer

The trend for better-late-than-never music videos continues with the promo for Talking Heads' 'Psycho Killer'. To mark the band's fiftieth anniversary (the song came out in 1977), Saoirse Ronan has teamed up with director Mike Mills to deliver a manic-depressive clip where every day is the same but different for her character—a woman on the verge of an American breakdown.

Framed to a tee by Mills and cinematographer Arseni Khachaturan, the film hops between the protagonist at home, in the car, at work, and alone in the woods. The camera placement never changes, but her clothes and body language do. The more time passes, the more she chafes against the monotony of modern life. There's sadness in her eyes, but also a spark desperate to light a fire.

When she does 'break', Ronan plays it almost like an alien or a newborn child, curious about her body and the world at large. She's indifferent to the vain, the blind, and the impolite that David Byrne sang about in 1977, ready to move in her own way at last. It's hard to keep keep pace with Byrne, Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth, and Jerry Harrison's frazzled instrumentation, but Ronan does so here.

UK

Promos