Saturday, February 25, 2012

Spoiler-Free Review: Kill List


Viewed as part of the After Dark portion of the Portland International Film Festival. 

Plot: I read this several times before seeing Ben Wheatley's second feature film Kill List, and I heard it again from the speaker who introduced the screening: the less you know about this movie going in, the better. I will say that it involves a hitman (Neil Maskell), which you can gather from the title, and that what starts as a well-written family drama gradually morphs into something much more sinister.


Here's a little more help. If you enjoy any of the following films, you may want to check out Kill List:

- The Wicker Man (1973)
- In Bruges
- The Descent

Review:  More than anything else, Kill List deserves a great amount of credit for its ambition to blend the crime drama, psychological thriller, and horror genres into an effective 95-minute film. The script by Wheatley and Amy Jump invites us into the home of our lead character and fleshes out his relationship to his family and friends so well that, like all the best horror, we actually care about what happens to him.

One thing's for sure: this film is not for the squeamish. As the plot spirals into darkness, the level of unsettling violence rises. But more disturbing than the bloodshed is the path that Wheatley has laid out for his protagonist; I'm not exaggerating when I say that one particular moment of the film sent chills throughout my entire body and, when I re-lived the scene in my mind on the drive home, caused the hair on my arms to stand up straight.

Not to say that Kill List is perfect. I had no trouble with several aspects of the film being left up to the imagination of the audience, but there are a few pacing issues throughout that may cause restless viewers to shift in their seats. If you fall into this camp, do yourself a favor and hold strong through the final act, which should send genre fans home with a punch to the gut and more than a handful of questions to ponder with their friend/spouse/partner – who most likely thought the film was garbage.

Kill List debuted at South by Southwest last March, and receives a limited U.S. release on February 3. It is also available now on Video on Demand, if you're so inclined.