Time & Perspective Quote by Matthew Bright

There is a grim little sleight of hand in Matthew Bright calling someone “hysterical” and “the first serial killer” in the same breath. It’s gallows humor with a filmmaker’s ear: the word “hysterical” should signal entertainment, a raconteur with charisma, but Bright pivots it into horror, revealing how easily violence can be mistaken for spectacle when it’s packaged as personality. That’s the cultural discomfort he’s poking at - our tendency to follow the story before we follow the evidence.

“New kettle of fish” lands like a shrug, the kind of offhand phrasing that makes atrocity feel almost quaint. Bright isn’t naïve; he’s exposing the way we domesticate the unbearable through casual language. That’s also why the line leans hard on period limitation: “we didn’t have the detection techniques in those days.” It reads as historical explanation, but it’s also a critique of the mythology that forms around criminals when institutions can’t - or won’t - puncture it quickly. In the absence of forensic certainty, narrative rushes in: rumor, legend, the thrill of proximity.

Coming from a director, the subtext gets sharper. Bright is acknowledging the overlap between true crime and storytelling: the camera’s appetite for “firsts,” for novelty, for a monster with a hook. The intent isn’t to admire the killer; it’s to show how a culture can accidentally audition evil for a starring role when the tools to contain it lag behind the urge to watch.