Review: Kill List

Because I saw the film at a private screening with under a dozen fellow journalists, I can’t attest to whether Kill List’s “WTF!?”-brand of narrative trickery plays better with a loud Midnight crowd. But I can say that, exhibition context aside, the film is of little merit.

After a dinner party sequence that finds main character Jay (Neil Maskell) in a puzzlingly unstable state of mind, the movie becomes a fairly standard, albeit incredibly brutal tale of hit-men carrying out a high-stakes job. Jay and partner Gal (Michael Smiley) follow the ‘kill list’ provided to them by an illusive client, crossing the names off one by one. There are clues that things are not what they seem–references to a past job gone wrong, a hit who claims that he knows Jay before he stares into the barrel of the gun, etc.–and the backstory is often kept intentionally vague, but few viewers will expect the absolute 180-degree mind-fuck that co-writer/director Ben Wheatley (Down Terrace) pulls in the final act. In fact, you’re lucky to make sense of the experience even days after you see it.

That may sound great on paper, but Kill List becomes morally reprehensible in the final twist, which reframes all the explicit violence that has come before as part of a glorified audience guessing game. I won’t spoil what happens for the poor souls who remain committed to enduring the film, but I will say that Wheatley ultimately takes things in a campy direction that makes the graphicness of what has come before morally/artistically unjustifiable. If they knew it was camp from the start, most viewers would be reviled by the entire picture.

Furthermore, you know a movie doesn’t have much to offer when it obscures major story points simply so that it can later reveal them, shocking viewers rather than stimulating them. The only wholly commendable elements of Kill List are the gritty widescreen cinematography by Laurie Rose and the credible lead performances by Maskell and Smiley, which are ultimately rendered useless by Wheatley’s sorry puppeteering antics. Some will no doubt get a kick out of Kill List’s confounding final turn, but only because they are naïve and/or inebriated enough to be impressed by narrative manipulation over actual substance.

* * *

Kill List (2012, UK). Originally reviewed for AFI Fest 2011 (11.4.2011). Produced by Katherine Butler, Ally Gipps, Robin Gutch, Hugo Heppell, Mark Herbert, Claire Jones, Barry Ryan, and Andrew Starke. Directed by Ben Wheatley. Written for the screen by Amy Jump and Ben Wheatley. Starring Neil Maskell, Michael Smiley, MyAnna Buring, Harry Simpson, Emma Fryer, and Struan Rodger. Distributed by IFC Films. Not rated, with a running time of 95 minutes.