not horrible nor great

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

I came across SV's writings following online manipulation by a narcissist, like many others. I did find a lot of it credible, although I immediately got suspicious due to some instances where he seems to lose his "objectivity", and make claims such as "the universe is chaotic and intrinsically evil; my future looks dark", etc. I contacted him on FB and he'd respond to some of my messages - he'd ignore others, which raised my suspicion. Luckily for me, soon enough one of his groupies linked me to this film. How could have someone seen it, and still be a "groupie", is beyond me. Anyway, I spontaneously commented: "Lidja needs help!" - after which I was immediately deleted from SV's friend-list. Let this serve as a good lesson to me - I believed he did actually have some common sense.He looks like a desperate and distressed child, moreover, making such silly self-compromising mistakes. So, the answer to a commenter above is - no, a psychopath cannot unfortunately be self-aware.But, while typing all this, I keep thinking one thing: this person, Lidja, is with this thing now. And nobody does anything to help her??!!P.S. I totally agree with the comment of Shemzl. I did have the feeling the filmmaker was unnecessarily involved, and making himself an object of his film, along with Vaknin. However, this could serve as a further warning to the viewer - do not underestimate the suggestive power of manipulators.

OK, so the title might be a big statement. I haven't seen all documentaries ever made and I bet a lot of people will disagree with me. Note, I never said this was the BEST documentary. But in its simplicity, there is something incredibly interesting and also quite groundbreaking. And here is why:Sam Vaknin is a self-declared expert on Narcissistic personality disorder and is perhaps most famous for the book "Malignant self-love" which he wrote together with his wife Lydia. Successful businessman turned eco-criminal, Sam is now a doctor of psychology who suffers from all 10 traits of Narcissistic Personality disorder as well as psychopathic traits. Another man who had all 10 traits was Brian Blackwell, who beat both of his parents to death just to cover up the lies he'd told his girlfriend. In other words, if all this is true, Sam is a very dangerous man.Ian Walker follows Sam as he undergoes tests that will confirm whether he is indeed a psychopath or not. As the film goes on we get to follow both Sam and the tests he takes as well as Ian himself, describing his relationship with his subject. Ian also interviews Lydia, Sam's wife. As the testing process becomes more in-depth, the story of their journey becomes more complex and in the end they paint a very insightful portrait of what being a psychopath really means.Though it might be a quite scary revelation, this movie asks some very interesting questions:Can a psychopath ever be self aware?If so, can that person control their behavior?And if we can teach a psychopath to control their behavior before they do something dangerous, what would that mean for society?And for those who say that this is just one person basking in his own glory - that's exactly what it is. And that's why it is so interesting.

I would expect that "I, Psychopath" will take it's rightful place in the annals of scarumentary (crockumentary?) next to " Reefer Madness" sometime in the coming decade or so. OK, slightly (ever so) less lurid than the latter. (The score of '5' reflects it's entertainment value only)But Please. A director incapable of setting limits on his subject? Who is this "documentary" about? "For months afterwards, bits of Sam's taunts come back to haunt me"? What actually WAS the point of this 30 minutes-that-I-shall-never-retrieve? (Yes, I DID miss the first 30 minutes, thankfully) But really, is this a "beware, they're out there"?Or a "they live and they wonder about their life" (If so, we-e-e-ll, has Big Brother not already done this to death?? AND been taken off the airwaves?!)kinda effort?Or is this a self serving rehash of a-a-all those times that the mean boys were, well, mean, dressed up as a sycophantic attempt to capture a sound byte and be able to essentialise and dismiss as 'pathology' a complex interaction between the aberrant self (cos Vaknin = not a your most stable of tables) as 'self being viewed' by 'self assuming a nonjudgemental-but-nonetheless-emotionally-involved- stance' And what fresh hell is this?? Espousing the diagnostic test "PCL whatnot" as a definitive measure of Is He a Psychopath? Gaaaah! Strewth, what next, Phrenology as the Next Big Thing? Ech. Tiresome stuff. Pass me the librium, slap that whinging director, tell that silly man Vaknin "No, not allowed", his wife maybe to get some help with her self esteem issues and shame on you, ABC, for screening this programme without a "park your credulity here" disclaimer.

This is a fascinating documentary about a fascinating subject -- a man who is -- or believes he is a psychopath, and whether his claims can be verified. Like good food for thought, it raises more questions than it answers: How can a psychopath be self aware enough to know and be curious about his psychopathy? Can he be faking being a psychopath? Would doing that make him a psychopath? It's so fascinating at least in part because we can get closer but never really arrive at these answers. It's a credit to the filmmaker that I wished it had gone on longer.Personal taste but I found myself wishing the focus were less on the implications of psychopathy in the business world and on general background, and on even narrower character study of Sam and his wife. The documentarian, though, is to be commended on his insight, self-reflection, and thoroughness in presenting a picture of such a difficult subject to capture. In the end I was left eager to know more about Sam what drives him, and disturbed by his pattern of behavior as well.