Reyka’s Speelman and five killers who love playing games

Reyka Season 1 introduced “charismatic narcissist” Angus Speelman (Iain Glen) at his parole hearing when he requested a meeting with criminal profiler Reyka Gama (Kim Engelbrecht, with the younger Reyka played by Gabrielle de Gama). From the jump he was smug and insinuatingly over-familiar with her, pressing buttons to toy with her emotions and condescendingly calling her an “impressive young woman” after criticising her serial killer profiles. He even chided her for refusing to look at him during his trial. You’d think he was behind bars for giving her grandad a heart attack by jumping out of his birthday cake. But Reyka was looking at the man who’d spent the past 20 years behind bars for kidnapping her as a 12-year-old, then spending the next four years grooming, raping and terrorising her.

Reyka escaped Angus Speelman physically at the age of 16. But as Reyka Season 2 continues to reveal, she has never truly been free. Here are just five moments with the former banana farmer from Season 1 who made us want to peel off our skin to wash it from the inside…

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“Is her skin darker or lighter than yours”?

During their first meeting at the prison in Episode 1, Angus questions Reyka about her daughter, Thuli and shows that he not only knows her full name, but her age, pointing out that she’s the same age as Reyka was when “you came to live with us”. And when Reyka refuses to show him a photograph of Thuli (Rashaan Stackling), he asks about her skin colour, like the evil apartheid relic that he is. His whispery voice quivers as he tells Reyka, “I miss you so much!” and hints, “There are things I could tell you, things you’ve forgotten, things I know you want to hear.” It’s an obvious ploy to further undermine Reyka’s grasp on her own memories and sanity, so no thank you, Mr Monster!

“Your mother’s not looking for you. She doesn’t want you.”

The night of Reyka’s first birthday in captivity in Episode 2, she overhears a girl named Lucy beg, “Please don’t be cross with me, Daddy”. But after Speelman’s wife, Portia (Nokuthula Ledwaba), refuses to beat Lucy, she flees him, and locks herself in Reyka’s bedroom. Soon afterwards Speelman visits Reyka in her room, calling her “Reyka, my love”. When she asks him to let her at least phone her mom because her mom always wishes her a happy birthday, Angus draws on her deepest fears as he croons that her mother is not even looking for her, and he kisses her on the cheek before leaving again. Just a little psychological warfare as a late-night treat. 

“You can’t because you’re a useless maid that washes and cleans”

Reyka’s Christmas with Speelman and Portia in Episode 4 features him capering around the house singing Christmas carols while dressed as Father Christmas and asking a now eager and excited Reyka whether she’s been a good girl. It would be a charming moment if he wasn’t, you know, her kidnapper! 

But when Reyka seems a little disappointed by her gift, a copy of the book Little Women, and Portia tells her that she doesn’t have to read it, Speelman’s game of happy families splinters. He tosses the book at Portia and tells her to read it, then literally rubs the book cover in her face while shouting that he’s not Angus, he’s Father Christmas. Portia runs out of the room crying after Speelman degrades her and forces her to admit that she can’t read. After that little domestic scene, Speelman calmly sits down to play the piano. And that’s the end of Christmas. 

“When we were in bed it was 100% consensual”

The Episode 4 Christmas is also the first night that we see Reyka go to Speelman’s room. But later in the episode, when Reyka’s mom Elsa (Anna-Mart van der Merwe) asks her whether Speelman raped her or abused her, Reyka tears up, defiantly insisting, “No, Ma, he looked after me like a dad.” 

Hmm, well, about that… When Elsa visits Speelman in prison at the end of the episode, he accuses her of abandoning Reyka and tells her smugly, “She learned love from me.” Superiority and self-righteousness firmly in place, he slips a cruel knife into her deepest fears and things she has tormented herself with for years. When Elsa begs him to let go of Reyka he merrily shrugs off her plea and tells her, “She’s part of me now.” And to really get to Elsa, he confirms that he did rape Reyka but claims the sex was consensual. Classic groomer behaviour. If you don’t want to beat him to a bloody smear with Elsa’s handbag at that point, are you even watching?

“I’ll be with you forever”

In the Reyka Season 1 finale (which will really make you wonder whether anyone bothered to properly investigate Reyka’s kidnapping and claims about Lucy, who was very publicly Speelman’s guest at the 1997 Farmers’ Association Banquet), Speelman manages to get his sweaty paws on Reyka’s daughter, Thuli. And he sets about trying to build a new family with her as he did with his previous daughter-wives, Lucy (in 1997) and Reyka (in 1998). 

When Reyka returns to Speelman’s farmhouse of horrors, she finds him fondling her daughter’s back while Thuli shivers and cries. And when Reyka holds her gun to his head, he pleads with her to pull the trigger, insisting, “Right now, I’ll be with you forever. Please just pull the trigger, my love.” 

Shooting someone she’s still clearly so conflicted about really would torment Reyka for the rest of her life, and he knows it. After all, he had four poisonous years with Reyka completely under his control. It’s just one last chance to make Reyka play by his rules. Because if she doesn’t shoot him, she’ll have to live with that, too.

Now as Reyka and Speelman return for another round of games in Reyka Season 2, we’ll be reaching for the brain bleach! But we’d like to say, “Angus Speelman, you’re not special”. We’ve spotted at least five other killers who love to play around. 

Five killers who love to play a game

Heretic: Mr Reed

When Mormon missionaries Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East), knock on Mr Reed’s (Hugh Grant) door, he’s all smiles and charm, promising that his wife is in the kitchen baking a blueberry pie. And you’d think it was a Mormon mission accomplished. But there is no wife and no pie. Barnes and Paxton are pulled into Mr Reed’s game in which he revels in his cat-and-mouse control over women – his true religion.

Just serial killer things: Call him Bob the Builder! On the off chance of women going door-to-door preaching to him, Mr Reed has done the most. He has hand-made a scale model of his entire house, featuring all its special adaptations including all the locks on the doors and windows, his special religion room stocked with knick-knacks from the faiths of the world, the tunnel under his house that leads to a soundproof basement, and the trapdoor in that basement that leads to a second, lower basement filled with cages (and their guests). Aside from this, he has been baking poisoned pies, writing scripts, and we presume, cooking for all his captives. We’d say it’s nice that he has a hobby, but it’s really not! 

Disturbia: Robert Turner

What are your neighbours really up to behind closed doors? Get too nosy like Kale Brecht (Shia LaBeouf), and you’ll find out. When one of his next-doors, Mr Turner (David Morse) isn’t pottering around his big comfortable house or his well-tended garden, he enjoys an active dating life… but Kale never sees him bring the same woman home twice. And while his dates seem to sneak out late at night for their walk down his path, look closer and you’ll see they all have the same build and hair. 

What might really interest potential buyers if Mr Turner ever moves out is the hidden kill room with its easy-to-clean tiled walls and floor, sleek steel dissection table and happily humming deep freezers, along with a second hidden entrance to the basement, and a trapdoor in the basement that drops you into the corpse pool. So many levels.

Just serial killer things: Robert Turner has absolutely crammed every nook and cranny and secret passageway of his house with decaying bodies in black plastic bags, as if he’s playing a game called Ultimate Corpse Hoarder. 

Saw X: John Kramer

John Kramer (Tobin Bell) is dead. Long live the Jigsaw Killer. The latest film in the Saw franchise brings John/Jigsaw back from the grave and sends him back in time to fill in the gap between Saw I and Saw II. What it’s filled with is mostly blood, guts, eyeballs and twisted metal, as John sets up a series of elaborate “games” with deadly consequences. He wants his victims to stare their own death in the face and learn something from the experience, or die trying.

Just serial killer things: Jigsaw isn’t just a philosopher of death, he has around 40 years working as a civil engineer and architect under his belt before he gets started on his hobby of conceptualising and constructing deadly games and traps from which the only way to escape might actually be every bit as horrendous as what happens when the trap springs shut. Aside from that, Jigsaw enjoys journaling about his hobby, as he draws elaborate schematics for devices like a mask with tubes attached that will use vacuum forces to suck out a man’s eyeballs. 

Abigail: Abigail Lazar

A man known only as Lambert (Giancarlo Esposito, Money Monster) assembles an anonymous heist crew to kidnap criminal kingpin Kristof Lazar’s (Matthew Goode) young daughter, Abigail (Alisha Weir). They must then smuggle her to a remote mansion where they are to keep her captive until her father coughs up $50 million in ransom. But, spoiler alert, chances are none of them will be alive to cash in by morning. This delicate 12-year-old they kidnapped from her ballet recital is really a full-fledged ancient vampire.

Just serial killer things: Playing games with your food. Abigail uses her mind-reading powers to figure out her victims’ vulnerabilities and darkest secrets to mentally break them down before she kills them. She leaves their corpses around to intimidate her other victims before she pounces again. And she points out to the macho ones that they are getting beaten up by a little girl, or takes control of their bodies to stage mock balletic performances for her own amusement. Giggle it up, girlie. 

The Boy: Ted Henley

After nine-year-old Ted (Jared Breeze) is abandoned by his mother and neglected by his alcoholic father, John Henley (David Morse), he starts collecting roadkill for cash. But Ted soon realises he can make more money if he just lures animals to their deaths on the busy road outside the motel his father manages. Not creepy enough? He also has a habit of becoming fixated on the motel’s other residents and slowly shifts his deadly habits to human prey, like sinister new guest William Colby (Rainn Wilson).

Just serial killer things: Let other boys collect Pokemon and play Minecraft; when he’s not busy running the motel because his dad is too drunk to bother, Ted has more absorbing hobbies. He enjoys fondling meat hooks, kicking chickens to death, and dumping food into the middle of the highway and then hunkering down to watch in fascination as vehicles pancake any animal desperate enough to pause for a snack. Lately, he’s started making himself a crown of deer antlers, and he’s staring at motel guests as if mentally measuring out their skin. One day Ted is going to go full-fledged Psycho!