Kill List

Kill List

Starring Neil Maskell, Michael Smiley, MyAnna Buring, Emma Fryer

Directed by Ben Wheatley

The Story:
Friends Jay (Neil Maskell) and Gal (Michael Smiley) are professional hit men, and while Jay quit after a job gone wrong, he finds his income dwindling, and his wife Shel (MyAnna Buring) is getting angry.  At an awkward dinner party, Jay agrees to a job with Gal that will make them a lot of money, by killing three people on a kill list.

As the two men begin the hunt, they find themselves thrown into an odd mystery where it seems that the victims know Jay, and are seemingly happy to be killed by him.  It all culminates in a frenzied race for survival not just for Jay, but for his family as well.

The Synopsis:
I find it very difficult to review a film like this without giving away potential spoilers, but I'll still give it a shot.  Moreso a Tarantino film than a Wes Craven pic, "Kill List" serves as a slow-burn descent into insanity and complete depravity, a road that begins at the very start and slowly descends to the ultimate conclusion in such a way you almost forget this is the path taken, but not in a bad way.  A mixture of "The Wicker Man," "The Blair Witch Project," and "Pulp Fiction," "Kill List" blends the genres of assassination action with cult-like horror in an oddly symmetrical way that makes you think it shouldn't work, but it does.

Jay is a middle-aged father and husband who's depressed over a botched job, and the whole first half of the film we don't even know he was a hit man - it plays like any man struggling to provide for his family without a job.  His wife Shel is equal parts insane and oddly loving, at one moment screaming at her husband and the next hugging him, and it's an odd dichotomy to say the least.

Then comes the dinner party, where Jay's best friend Gal brings along his latest date - a mysterious girl named Fiona - and this is where the descent begins.  Gal and Jay's relationship is rocky to say the least, but ultimately the two are best friends (in fact, there's a moment where the two are literally at each others' throats, and the next minute they're enjoying a beer and laughing - typically not something you'd see in conventional friendships).  The two are professional hit men, and are given a job to kill three people.  At first, it seems relatively simple, but as the two stalk and kill their targets, they find that these men aren't saints, and think they could even be doing some good for society.

Then when it comes time for the third target to die, the two men discover that they're in way over their heads, as they uncover a deadly cult that has purposes that aren't known - and that's the true beauty of a film like this.  There's a lot of open-ended questions - actually more questions than answers in the entire film - and director Ben Wheatley doesn't allow the answers to come spoon-fed to us, if at all.  This isn't a typical movie with a generic beginning, middle, and end, but rather an arthouse piece wrapped in action and suspense, with a final twenty minute descent into a living hell.

Much of the power behind the film lies in the caliber of its two male leads, and Neil Maskell and Michael Smiley play off each other in a way that only lifelong friends could do, even if they weren't lifelong friends in real life.  The two share intimate moments between friends, as well as roughhousing and arguments that come with years of built-up trust.  The two work well together, and give a sense of reality in a film that somehow seems both grounded in reality and fantasy in equal measure.  Ultimately, that's the coexisting aspect of "Kill List" that makes it difficult to review - the answers aren't there, but we're not really sure the questions that need to be asked.

The Summary:
A slow-burn action that turns truly horrific, "Kill List" is a beautiful study in arthouse performance, brought to life with two accomplished actors and a story that slowly unfolds like the pages of a classic novel - if it was written by Stephen King.

The Score: A