[2] The film is directed by Michael Winterbottom and stars Casey Affleck, Jessica Alba, and Kate Hudson.

[4][5] In 1952, Deputy Sheriff Lou Ford is a pillar of his small west Texas community; secretly, he is a sociopath with violent sexual tastes.

At the request of Sheriff Bob Maples, Lou visits Joyce Lakeland, a prostitute who is having an affair with Conway's son, Elmer.

When she continuously provokes him with slaps, Lou violently beats Joyce, who enjoys pain, and they begin their own affair.

Journalist and union organizer Joe Rothman, who had previously suggested that Conway had Mike killed, implies that he knows Lou is the killer.

Lost in violent fantasies, Lou douses his house in gasoline and alcohol, arms himself with a knife, and sits in his study to await retribution.

A film adaptation was eventually made in 1976, directed by Burt Kennedy and starring Stacy Keach as Lou Ford and Susan Tyrrell as Joyce Lakeland.

In the mid-1980s, there was another attempt to adapt the book into a film, with Tom Cruise as Lou Ford, Brooke Shields as Amy Stanton, and Demi Moore as Joyce Lakeland.

Juliette Lewis was considered for the part of Joyce Lakeland and Brad Pitt was attached to star as Lou Ford.

He hoped the film would star Leonardo DiCaprio as Lou Ford, Charlize Theron as Amy Stanton and Drew Barrymore as Joyce Lakeland.

Marc Rocco stepped in, and wanted to cast Casey Affleck as Lou Ford, Reese Witherspoon as Amy Stanton and Maggie Gyllenhaal as Joyce Lakeland.

The critical consensus is: "The Killer Inside Me is stylish and beautifully shot, but Michael Winterbottom's distance from his characters robs this often brutally violent film of crucial emotional context.

"[16] Rachel Cooke of The Observer, after describing a "sickeningly protracted" scene from the film in which Joyce is beaten by Lou, said "I was so queasy, I had to go and stand outside.

I thought I might actually faint"; she notes that several of the scenes of violence are "so long and so horribly graphic" and points out that "by lingering only over the violence done to women—by contrast, a male character gets to die off camera—he has, I think, ruined his own picture, drawing the audience's attention away both from its exquisite noir mood, and from Affleck's mesmerising performance.

"[16] Stephen Dalton, reviewing the film for The Times after it closed the Berlin Film Festival, acknowledged the controversy over the depiction of violence:[6] Although Ford's victims include men and women, it is his savage and sustained assaults on female characters that has made The Killer Inside Me controversial.

Critics cited Affleck's boyish appearance and mannerisms, and "occasionally goofy, stilted" delivery as lacking the intensity such a role required.