This review is a very important one. With this review of Kill List, I will have finally reviewed a movie for every letter of the alphabet, plus a numerical title. It's quite surprising really that K turned out to be the last letter needed - I had expected Q or X to be the missing movies, but I had forgotten about The Quiet Ones and X-Cross. In actual fact, I had been planning to do a review of Kill List for some time anyway, but it got bumped up the list when I realised it would complete my A-Z.
Jay is a former soldier who now makes a living as a contract killer - or at least he would, but he hasn't worked a job in eight months after a previous job went badly wrong and left him with some obvious PTSD and possible physical injuries (and possibly a painkiller addiction). His wife Shel is constantly on him to start taking jobs again as the money is running out, which leads to huge fights between the two of them. But it's not until his best friend and partner Gal comes to him with the offer of a job does Jay finally agree to start working again. The job seems to be a simple one - they have a list of three people who they have to kill - but things get strange almost instantly when the client cuts both his and Jay's hands so they can sign the contract in blood. The targets are seemingly random, from a priest to an MP, but they also seem to recognise Jay and thank him before he kills him. And then there's the strange ritualistic symbol that keeps appearing around them, including one secretly carved on the back of Jay's bathroom mirror by Gal's girlfriend Fiona. Things get darker and more sinister as Jay and Gal continue down the list, as it becomes clear that something far bigger than either of them could comprehend is going on...
Kill List is a film you've really got to pay attention to the whole time you're watching, otherwise you'll end up like me and have to keep pausing and rewinding bits because your kitten is teething and keeps trying to cut her teeth on your hand, and then afterwards you'll rush to Wikipedia and IMDB to try to figure out the bits you missed the context for and still not come out much more knowledgeable. It's a very deep film. This appears to be something of a signature of director Ben Wheatley - I once watched another of his films, A Field in England, with the intention of reviewing it as well, but by the end of it I still wasn't sure what I had watched other than it was black-and-white, set during the English Civil War, and probably about alchemy. At least this time I was able to come away with a good idea of what I had just watched and what exactly had happened.
And you know what? It's damn good.
There's a very tangible feeling of growing dread as the film progresses - first from the tremendously nasty fights Jay and Shel have, and then from the dramatic irony we're privy to as we see Fiona carve this mysterious occult-looking symbol on the back of a mirror and then steal a piece of toilet paper that was used to mop up blood after Jay had a shaving accident; we keep seeing the symbol pop up as Jay and Gal work their way through the list, but they of course have no idea of its importance or meaning (although we don't really know that either, but we do know more than them at least). Things take darker and darker turns as they go, and the near-reverence the targets seem to treat Jay with, regardless of what he does to them, is deeply disturbing. By the film's end (which I'm not going to spoil because people really should go in blind to see this film) you get some idea of what's going on, but as to why? We're left to reach our own conclusions on that one.
Wheatley is good at making his characters feel real to the audience. Apparently there was quite a bit of improvised dialogue from the cast, which I'm not at all surprised by (I was half-convinced it was mumblecore at one point), but the way the characters all interact and communicate with each other feels so very natural that you can't help but feel for them, no matter what terrible things they might end up doing. There's very little background or explanations for what is happening or has happened - Wheatley likes to keep things ambiguous in his films - and in a way that makes things worse: what we imagine is nearly always worse than what is presented to us. There's also a scene where shark song is used as the equivalent of "mood music", which I think is just inspired. One word of warning, however - although we never see the deeds, a dog is shot dead, a cat is killed and ritually strung up, and two rabbits are killed for food.
So Kill List is definitely a film I can recommend. Just make sure you're really paying attention or you'll come out of it confused and quite possibly wondering what all the fuss was about.
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