The Hollywood movies that inspire Roger’s crimes are a central motif that explores the deceptive nature of appearances and the corrupting influence of ego. The movies drive the idea that Roger sees his job as a performance, something that he has to curate or direct in order to move up in status, which links directly to the theme of Protective Masculinity as a Mask for Violence. Roger thus creates a mythos around his actions as a detective and as a killer, casting himself as both the director and hero of his own story.

By killing people to gain attention, Roger also turns himself into the villain of the narrative. This motivates him to frame Peter Farrer for the murders, using Peter’s obsession with film to make his story feel more plausible. In this part of the plan, Roger projects all his abject qualities into Peter, including the skewed psychology he possesses as a killer. He himself labels his manufactured pattern, telling Beverley, “The motive’s abnormal” (66). By coining this term, Greaves actively directs the investigation away from himself, hiding his banal motives of professional jealousy and rage behind a veneer of cinematic complexity.

This motif also functions as a cynical critique of how violence is consumed; Roger understands that a spectacular, movie-like crime is harder for law enforcement and the public to connect to an ordinary man like a cop. The performative nature of the violence, which turns the bodies of Roger’s female victims into props for him to manipulate, shows how easily he disregards other people’s humanity for the sake of spectacle. The eventual deciphering of this pattern by Beverley and Appleton, himself an expert on movies, underscores the artifice of masculinity, which the movies Roger chooses to reference all try to project.