Main cast: Neil Maskell (Jay), Michael Smiley (Gal), MyAnna Buring (Shel), and Emma Fryer (Fiona)
Director: Ben Wheatley
Kill List is Ben Wheatley’s pride and joy, as he wants this movie to be a mix of crime thriller and Lovecraft-ian horror. While such a concept can work, this movie makes it hard to tell whether things are happening by design or are pulled out of Mr Wheatley’s rear end.
Jay and Gal are former British soldiers that are trying to get used to civilian life. While Gal seems to have an easier time doing so, Jay has been unemployed for eight months and is now constantly fighting with his wife Shel over their finances, or the lack of it.
Well, Gal proposes what seems like a perfect solution: a mysterious man, called simply the Client in the credit listing, is looking for two hired killers to take down three lowlifes involved in producing child pornography. Hey, the world is rid of three scumbags, and they get a lot of money. Sounds like a win-win situation!
If this whole thing seemed tad too perfect, well, it is. For one, the first two people they kill seem pleased and even thank them for their effort. Sadly, our twosome aren’t exactly the smartest people around, which is why this movie gets to happen, heh.
Well, one good thing about this one is that it doesn’t shy away from graphic violence. Those looking for that kind of fix can get some here, although the early parts of the movie can be slow and the constant fighting between Jay and Shel can grate on the nerves pretty quickly.
However, the movie becomes increasingly outlandish and even ludicrous as it progresses. While I can certainly buy that politicians and other wealthy scumbags probably sold their souls to some great evil to achieve what they have, here, the cult and horror elements are inserted in a manner admitted by Mr Wheatley to be as deliberately vague and ill-explained as possible in order to generate an air of mystery and even terror.
While that approach certainly can work if done right, it is a polarizing one. Sometimes people will be receptive to it, sometimes they will think the people behind the movie are just making things up as they go along. Here, my reaction is more toward the latter: the movie seems more interested in generating twists and turns first, telling a coherent story a distant second.
Furthermore, these twists and turns don’t make sense. Someone carrying out an actual human sacrifice in their backyard (admittedly, it’s a big backyard), and not one character stops to think that the whole scenario is probably getting too weird? Jay and Gal know very well that things have gone off the rails, but not once they stop and reconsider whether they should go ahead with what they are planning to do.
The whole thing culminates in a bizarre scenario where naked cultists swarm and surround a house… and no one in the house, or even the neighborhood, thinks of calling the cops?
The people in this movie do things for the sake of generating twists and turns in line with the movie wanting to be as mysterious as possible, but what results is more of an earnest but rather clumsy effort to get people to think of the movie as something profound to be watched over and over.
Then there is that ending. Personally, I can see that coming from a mile away, because those characters are clearly introduced solely for this very moment.
So yes, this movie tries, but it plays its cards a little too obviously, and cynical old me isn’t too impressed with it. It is watchable for the most part up until that absurdly try-hard ending, but for the most part, it fumbles more than it succeeds in whatever it is trying to achieve at the end of the day.
