Kill List (2012)
Director: Ben Wheatley
Cast: Neil Maskell, Michael Smiley, Myanna Burning
Firstly, let me begin by saying that my film watching has been off the hook. Perhaps that's why I haven't posted in awhile? It's gotten to the point where I've watched three films a day. How do I have the time to do this? Beats me. Could it be I don't have a life? Unlikely (my dwindling bank account can attest to that). Watching movies is simply my favorite thing to do in the whole world.
Here's a list of the best films from 2012-13 viewed in the past month:
Passion (Brian de Palma): A
It's a Disaster (Todd Berger ): A-
Mud (Jeff Nichols): A+
The Conjuring (James Wan): A-
The Purge (James DeMonaco): A
Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami): A
The Reluctant Fundamentalist (Mira Nair): B+
VHS 2 (assorted): A
Maniac (Franck Khalfoun): A
Kill List (Ben Wheatley): A+
Onto Kill List. The British horror/crime/thriller flick (which is impressive already for so adeptly blending genres) is tied with Mud for my favorite this year. Whereas Mud is a fantastic movie about the human capacity for love, second chances, and emerging from the grueling American frontier unscathed, Kill List is the opposite side of the spectrum. It's about the human capacity for beastliness.
Few horror movies have impressed me to the degree that this movie has. I knew from the first few frames and eerie soundtrack that I was about to be thrown into a shit-show ride with enough gore and twists to sufficiently disturb my sleep.
Why would anyone want to be so disturbed you might ask? To me, horror movies are like spicy food. You keep searching for that one dish that actually manages to make your mouth burn.
Kill List is about a contract killer named Jay (Neil Maskell) who was once a British solider in Kiev. He's returned to his family in Northern England (Sheffield) with some pretty glaringly obvious hang ups. Namely, he enjoys pummeling his targets to death any chance he gets. He works alongside his best friend Gal (Michael Smiley), who serves as ying to Neil's yang. Where Neil is erratic, explosive, and often maniacal, Gal is pacifying and level-headed. They agree to work a set of three hits for a creepy old millionaire whom they know little about (isn't that how these things work?). Along the way, Jay's rage and temper flares violently, and he enjoys torturing his targets instead of just shooting them in the head like he's supposed to. Gal gets fed up with his psycho ways, and all along Jay's wife Shel (Myanna Burning) and young son are thrown into the mix-- a combination of familial grounding and lurking tragedy just around the bend.
Once the final (and utterly shocking) frame of Kill List has passed, you begin to piece everything together in a most spectacular way. Not one element of this hybrid crime/horror film is irrelevant or superfluous. Moreover, at the film's foundation, an important and unique juxtaposition presents itself: "modern" killing equipped with automatic weapons and computer technology, with "primitive" killing equipped with makeshift stabbing devices and pagan overtones.
As the title intimates, Wheatley's use of placards with the name of each of Jay and Gal's kill targets is clever and haunting. The final horrible scene leaves so many moral and thematic questions answered and unanswered at the same time. How much of our literal and metaphysical selves do we give up by uninhibitedly unleashing the killer within us? The film's answer is clear: all of it.
Summation: Can't wait for Ben Wheatley's newest film, A Field in England.
A+
