Sometimes a film title says it all, or at least entirely too much.

Turkish filmmaker Tolga Karaçelik blunders into that truism all too eagerly with his American feature film debut — a comic thriller he deigned to over-label “Psycho Therapy: The Shallow Tale of a Writer Who Decided to Write about a Serial Killer.”

Glib, hackneyed in subject matter (Hollywood makes entirely too many serial killer stories, so indie cinema should steer clear), slow in pace and with “Shallow” doing all the heavy lifting in that ungainly title, one can still see how it might have paid off in defter hands.

There’s an unhappy couple at the center of it all. We meet Keane (John Magaro) and Suzie (Britt Lower) at an NYC dinner party where his talk of his “new book” bores and almost amuses the other guests as he describes a Neanderthal/Homo Sapiens romance in the Slovenia of 40,000 years ago.

As his first novel was Mongolian in subject matter and won some award, Keane figures he’s found a gimmick that will suit perhaps his readership if not his agent (Ward Horton). And certainly not his wife.

Suzie the breadwinner has a severity about her reflected in bangs so sharp you could slice pizza with them and a dead-eyed stare that would break any spouse paying attention. Keane isn’t.

“They were laughing at you,” doesn’t get a rise out of him. “I want a divorce” does.

With a no confidence vote from his agent and a post mortem ultimatum from his wife, maybe Keane should reconsider the suggestions of this “fan” (Steve Buscemi) who approaches him with the suggestion that he write “a sexy story with a serial killer.” The stranger, named Kollmick, approaches him more than once. Because “just Kollmick” would love to “help.”

He’s a “retired serial killer,” he says. “I managed to stop before getting caught,” he explains.

Kollmick knows his craft, or at least knows all the right authors — pathologists and mystery novelists — to quote about that craft. He will lecture Keane, be his “counselor” as he takes him inside the mind of a serial killer and help him write his book.

But Kollmick taking drunken Keane home means he bumps into the soon-to-be-ex-wife. She confuses “counselor” with “couples therapist.” And brittle and bitter as she is, she perceives this as the first time Keane has “taken the initiative” in their relationship.

Kollmick finds himself trapped into faking his way through something he knows nothing about on any level.

Keane cuttingly sums up the totality of marriage counselor expertise needed in a couple of suggested phrases — “safe zone” and the prompt to answer any question with “Is that what you think?” The idea that a serial killer is conducting an “autopsy” of their marriage is cute. But that’s about it as far as “clever” goes here.

The script has Suzie noting Keane’s new routines, habits and research materials — books on toxicology, “How to Get Away with Murder,” etc. — and figures he’s plotting her murder. Soon she’s following him/”them” as they plot a sort of dry run kidnapping as training.

There’s potential for something madcap or at least droll in all of this. Magaro — of “Past Lives” and just seen in “The Mastermind” — is game and iconic character player Buscemi is as credible as the somewhat inane and verbose script allows him to be. Lower, of TV’s “Severance” lets us see Suzie as full of darkly comic potential.

But as it lumbers along, we can’t help but notice the succession of scenes, sequences, plot threads or plot twists that just don’t come off.

Every promising direction is stopped dead in its tracks. And most every fraught yet comical situation is left to wither on the vine.

Turkish cinema isn’t known for its riotous comedies. But perhaps Karaçelik could take this set up and make something funnier out of it in his native land in his native tongue. I’m sure Netflix would swallow that pitch.

Rating: TV-16, violence, profanity

Cast: John Magaro, Steve Buscemi and Britt Lower

Credits: Scripted and directed by
Tolga Karaçelik. A Brainstorm Media release on Amazon, other streamers

Running time: 1:42