Prior to the release of ''Landscape Suicide'', Benning had already built a reputation for his exceedingly long, stationary camera shots of landscapes and industrial scenes. ''Landscape Suicide'' merged the mesmerizing monotony of these structuralist film approaches with the fact-finding ethos of documentary filmmaking. The film recounts, and parallels, two murders that took place thirty years apart: Bernadette Protti's stabbing of high school friend Kirsten Costas in Northern California in early 1984, and the infamous double homicide and taxidermies committed by Ed Gein in Northern Wisconsin three decades prior.