Kill list - *****

Directed by Ben Wheatley. Starring Neil Maskell, Michael Smiley, Myanna Buring, Emma Fryer. UK 2011 95 mins Certificate 18.

Release Date : 26th December 2011. RRP Blu-ray : £19.99 RRP DVD : £15.99

Following the little-seen found-footage shocker EXHIBIT A (also, curiously, set and shot in Yorkshire) and this year’s THE GLASS MAN, writer Amy Jump’s riveting screenplay for KILL LIST sets its escalating horrors against an all-too-real backdrop of widespread recession and strained relationships. Narratively it doesn’t truly turn into a horror movie until a nightmarish second half bringing extreme brutality and occultism, but DOWN TERRACE director Ben Wheatley captures an overpowering sense of dread from the very first scene and never loosens the grip.

At the outset, hot-headed ex-soldier / out-of-work contract killer Neil Maskell argues relentlessly with his frustrated wife (Myanna Buring), who recognises the need for him to take a new assignment and lambasts his tendency to spend £200 on the weekly groceries without buying any toilet roll. The credibly tense scenes of a troubled relationship roots the movie in a recognisable world and Wheatley has a knack for making the mundane unsettling: teeth-brushing, plastic sword-play between Maskell and his seven year old son, and a routine dinner with friends all play out with an inexplicable and inescapable feeling of impending doom.

Maskell, also encouraged by his partner (Michael Smiley), is finally offered a lucrative new job. Typical of the movie’s discomforting tonal shifts, a remarkably queasy / hilarious encounter with a Christian group in a hotel restaurant immediately precedes the first part of their mission: the assassination of a priest. Further instructions to rub out more of society’s less savoury characters follow, but Smiley is powerless to prevent Maskell – permanently scarred by a job in Kiev eight months ago – from crossing the line and losing it medieval-style when he should be professionally following orders. And the truth about their “kill-list” reveals the job is far from routine.

Although ultimately as much of a downer as any of the outstanding horror films of the past few years, KILL LIST has a pivotal, poignant human centre thanks to Smiley’s witty, characteristically charismatic performance as Maskell’s loyal friend. Smiley’s comic timing is put to good use, and Wheatley finds unexpected warmth and humour in the underplayed moments where the two men have time to talk. Despite the extreme circumstances in which they find themselves, these are ultimately two blokes who are just as emotionally vulnerable and prone to loneliness as the rest of us.

With its tale of an economically struggling husband / father who takes a one-way trip to the dark-side after returning to his old job, destroying his family in the process, the movie has significant narrative parallels to A SERBIAN FILM but, despite a similarly nihilistic conclusion, never becomes hung up on shock tactics. That said, a harrowing, savage assault on a librarian with a hammer ranks as one of the harshest movie sequences in recent memory, and Wheatley doesn’t flinch from capturing the ugliness of unrestrained violence.

Steven West.

GORE IN THE STORE
REVIEWS BY FANS FOR FANS
5 STAR FAB - 1 STAR RUBBISH