Kill List - Film Review

The follow up to his 2009 crime family drama Up Terrace, Ben Wheatley here delivers what could tentatively be described as his mangum opus, a dark and disturbing thriller that is one part gritty crime story, other Wicker Man style horror, with plenitful mood whiplashes and foreboding.

Jay (Neil Maskell) is a former soldier and private contractor turned professional assassin, out of action for eight months following a traumatic job in Kiev which left him psychologically and physically damaged. When the money runs out due to his sabbatical, he is put under pressure by his knowing, glamourous wife Shel (MyAnna Buring), and young son Sam (Harry Simpson), to get back into the business, in part because his hot tub needs an expensive fix. Following a dinner party gone wrong, in spectacular style, Jay gives in and saddles up with best mate and fellow hitman Gal (Michael Smiley) on a new, seemingly simple contract; kill three men, none of them armed or particularly dangeous.

But in the tradition of such pitch black noir, things are simply not so straightforward. Alarm bells sound immediately as their client (Struan Rodger) seals the deal in blood, literally. Gal's date to the party Fiona (Emma Fryer) pops up suspiciously, both as a new friend of Jay's family and as a mysterious figure in his dreams. As their mission begins, amidst much banter and bravado from the two anti-heroes, more and more warning signs becoming audible, as Jay goes off-road, undone by curiosity about his marks, leading them both down a garden path of depravity and hideously violent retribution. The swirling madness around the pair grows in intensity, becoming deeply personal, hugely worrying, and ultimately insane.

The reason Kill List has such an impact is because it vehemently refuses to set its stall out from the start, instead just hints at the dark road ahead through lingering musical beats and thoughtful camera angles. We open with a domestic argument over bills and toilet roll, hinting rather than revealing at the unusual lifestyle of the central family. Jay is shown to be a caring father and decent husband, but one frustrated and pent up. Shel is portrayed as a loving mother and loyal wife, one who is simply strained by financial problems and Jay's malaise, driven to emotional phone calls to her mother in Swedish which Jay cannot understand. Small details like this, and honest characterisations that are never forced, make these people genuine from the off.

This authentic, almost mundane trait comes into its own with the introduction of Gal. The pair are great fun, with huge levels of bromance chemistry born from their time in the army and beyond, and they smirk at their dual wisecracks, thrive off their witty exchanges born out of years of familiarity. The naturalistic approach is enhanced by much of the dialogue in these scenes being improvised by Maskell and Smiley. That's not to say it's all just potty talk for minutes at a time, as scenes are levened by spectacular set pieces (such as Jay's growing fury at a Christian support group at a restaraunt), and shocking revelations. The film has two moral cores, that being Jay's family as his anchor, and Gal's friendship as his bond.

So the level of shocking is enhanced when things begin to get dark, and very very dark at that, quite suddenly. After a baffling first hit, in which their victim seems overjoyed and thanks his killers, the second dredges up more questions, and answers best left unseen by them breaking into the man's lockup and making a horrific discovery which sees Jay lead the crusade into psychotic punishment, beyond the call. It's a mistake, one that catches up with him. The violence in the film is in some parts routine, but when emotion is brought in becomes horrific and disturbing, every agony stricken moment of a hammer attack felt by the viewer. Sickening as it is, it's also entirely neccessary. Partly to make a point over the profession, also to give us a harrowing look into Jay's black heart that allows his occupation.

The film's final third, almost incomprehensible at times but never failing to engross, lays bare the film's themes and, perhaps, its purpose. Watched literally, it is a shocking, astonishing and deeply unsettling conclusion to a story which had built up to a nightmarish fever pitch, one which doesn't throw out answers and instead takes a whole new level of crazed horror because of the resolutions it doesn't provide.

However, seen metaphorically, it takes on a searing, infused moral parable, by means using character study and down and dirty Ken Loach style character base to let us connect to the players, and then bringing them into a twisted fairy tale of the depraved. Reminscent of the expression "the road to evil is paved with good intentions", Jay's ultimate fate is at the end of the road he started down when he abandoned professional antipathy and instead became a violent vigilante, and even before then by killing people anonymously in order to provide for his family. Much of the chaos that insues is down to his warped psyche, and his willingness to cave in skulls or destroy kneecaps. In the process of losing his soul truly, he loses everything around him. A phrase resonates, unheard or spoken, throughout: heart of darkness.

It's this kind of discussion which the film provokes, something you would never anticipate from reading the blurbs or DVD case plot summary, and why it lingers in the memory so vividly, and why it demands to be watched. Having pottered in the background as minor charaters in films of varying quality in the past, Neil Maskell delivers as the film's lead, a clenched ball of fury also capable of showing a caring, loving side, a 60/40 of dark and light, complex and at times highly intimidating, exactly as you would imagine a man of his ilk.

Rising star MyAnna Buring also brings depth to wife Shel, a role which in inferior hands would likely have been shrill. She manages to make her character a vivid tapestry of various emotions, many of them untouched but suggested by a withering stare of snarky comment. To most films of this ilk or set up, she is a plot device used to force the protagonist into action. In Kill List, she is a three dimensional character with real motives and feelings, living and breathing through the screen. The arguments between the characters, particularly during the virtuoso dinner party scene, are both great spectacles and dauntingly realistic.

And Northern Irish comedian Michael Smiley (best known for playing Tyres in Spaced) really delivers in a serious role, although his charisma and charm comes from Gal's comic traits, his funny one liners and wry humour. But his amiablity and trustworthiness is palpable, and he is the film's most likeable character, a dissolved voice of reason who happens to murder people for cash. Such is the skewed morality of the film.

If there's only one thing you can say of Kill List, it has to be its impact. It hits hard and low, astonishing and pulversing, shocking you to the core. This is a film that defies expectations and never lets you drop your guard, always ready to twist breakneck one way, then slam back the other. You feel every punch, every shot, every moment of pure horror and suspense. Described by one soundbite as "a cult classic in the making", this is indeed a film that is likely to build up a devoted fanbase, and much adulation in the process. Whether you understand it, or come to terms with its ending, is not so black and white, appropriately so.

9/10