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| Courtesy of IFC Films |
Before unveiling one of the very best
possible post-pandemic themed films ever made with his 2021 psychedelic
COVID-inspired thriller In the Earth, the British husband/wife team of
director Ben Wheatley and his co-writer and business partner Amy Jump first
made themselves known throughout the world indie horror arena with their 2011 contract
killer thriller/horror film and second feature Kill List.
Inarguably the current king and queen
of quickies, i.e. microbudget film productions written and directed on the fly,
Mr. Wheatley and Mrs. Jump have since gone on to fashion an entire oeuvre of
like-minded crime-horror films including but not limited to Sightseers, A Field in England, Free Fire and even the ambitious misfire High-Rise.
While Wheatley and Jump are currently
at work on the yet-to-be-announced The Meg sequel, let’s circle back to
the film that put them on the map with today’s 31 Days of Hell entry, Kill
List. Written specifically for the
two leading actors Neil Maskell and Michael Smiley, the film concerns British
soldier Jay (Maskell) who having recently returned home from a tour of duty in
Kyiv reunites with fellow soldier and friend Gal (Smiley) and their wives for
dinner.
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| Courtesy of IFC Films |
In actuality Jay and Gal have since
taken up work as contract killers for hire working for a variety of criminal factions. Suffering from wartime PTSD, Jay’s erratic
outbursts of violent behavior on several of their runs starts spiraling out of
control. Meanwhile mercurial employers
continue to demand more dangerous jobs (including but not limited to a
mysterious Satanic cult) from the two trying to finish their designated Kill
List which threatens to ensnare Jay, Gal and their families in a web of
madness and murder.
A classic case of hunters becoming hunted
in a startling and truly strange crossbreed between the crime thriller and
surreal psychological horror with elements of the occult, Ben Wheatley’s unpredictable
shape-shifting quietly simmering monster of a movie starts out nebulously before
swimming into darker deeper waters as it proceeds to blow up in your face.
Playing on fears of the abrupt shock of
brutality, not truly knowing ourselves or the depths we can reach, and the idea
of losing complete control of your own life, Kill List begins as a
straightforward dialogue driven crime drama-thriller before gradually growing
more disturbing and deeply insane as it proceeds to yank the rug out from under
you. By the time you and the characters
think you have figured out what is really going on, it is already far too
late.
Lensed beautifully in digital panoramic
widescreen by Wheatley’s right-hand man Laurie Rose who with exception to In
the Earth has shot all of the director’s films, the look of Kill List cements
Wheatley’s intense focus on the purely visual aspect of the film with the
remaining chips left to fall into place later.
Intercut between handsomely framed wide-angled shots and frenetic
intense close-ups often done via handheld, the film gradually begins to
aesthetically unravel with the worlds of the characters over the course of the
movie.
Then there’s the film’s bizarre, hair-raising
electronic soundtrack by now-legendary composer Jim Williams.A recurring Wheatley collaborator who also went
on to score Raw, Possessor and the Palme d’Or winning Titane,
Williams’ scratchy, grungy electronica distortion filled soundscapes call out
raw dread within the listening viewer interspersed with a most unusual use of
sampled shark songs. So weirdly
unnerving is the score completely on its own, you could listen to it in total
darkness and feel a very strong urge to start screaming.
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| Courtesy of IFC Films |
Much like the characters in the film,
played brilliantly by Maskell and Smiley who went on to win a British Independent
Film Award for Best Supporting Actor, Kill List is constantly shedding
skin and morphing until we no longer recognize its madcap face. Smiley, a recurring veteran of the Wheatley
horror universe, gives a top tier performance as a mostly-everyman and fellow
former comrade trying to keep a lid on their kill list and his
possibly-deranged partner in crime.
Though upstaged by Smiley, Maskell is
no less inspired in this as a seemingly withdrawn milquetoast who is really chomping
at the bit to do violence. So feeble in
appearance is our film’s “hero” that when the moments of raw explicit brutality
erupt they feel real and raw, arguably spoken of the same breath as Macon Blair’s
vengeful turn in Jeremy Saulnier’s searing southern baked thriller Blue Ruin. Lending equal support to the two is The
Descent veteran MyAnna Buring as Jay’s wife Shel who herself may harbor more
in common with her husband’s activities than she leads on.
Despite being a small box office
performer, Kill List opened to unanimous critical acclaim praising
Wheatley’s mysterious direction and the strengths of the two leading
performances. Ostensibly a crime
thriller that gradually transforms into outright visceral horror and some heavy
gavel drops in the third act, Ben Wheatley and Amy Jump’s second feature
ushered in the duo as a force to be reckoned with and worth paying close
attention to.
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| Courtesy of IFC Films |
While not my introduction to (or
favorite of) Wheatley, Kill List represents a confident and daring
second feature willing to take chances and somehow jump the narrative rails
several times over without losing control of itself or the audience. Wheatley is also one of the few directors to
channel elements of folk horror into a contemporary setting and period and by
the time we’ve reached the end of his searingly disturbing home run of a movie,
we soon realize the implacable fears being stoked by it date back to the
beginning of time itself. Whether it be
past or present, Kill List points a flashlight in the middle of darkness
to our own internal untapped killer instincts and how little control of our own
lives we may really have in the world we live in.
--Andrew Kotwicki
