Ben Wheatley
Kill List

THE REVIEW

"Damn. The first job in months and he loses it"

8 months prior, something unpleasant happened, but we'll never know exactly what. Sure, later on, we kind of manage to imagine it, but not entirely. And in the end, it doesn’t even matter.

What matters is that there’s an unemployed man, and dealing with him is becoming very difficult.

Go back. Shuffle the deck.

A strange symbol. Two parents whose marriage is going through a rough patch due to something that happened 8 months prior, causing not a few difficulties and psychological issues. The job went wrong, and everything else with it. Furious arguments. Dinner invitation. Reconciliation.

The plot initially seems simple and straightforward, trivial. Okay, it’s a dirty job, there’s that strange symbol we saw earlier, but there have been plenty of films like this, you have to be good to make something good out of it.

Yet it’s only apparently so.

THE PRIEST

THE LIBRARIAN

THE MP

"But what did he see on that display? "

It starts with verbal violence, proceeds to actual violence (blood, to be clear...murders), and reaches something incredibly chaotic.

"Kill List" is a progressive film, it gets weirder and weirder, until you don’t understand a thing but you don’t even realize that you don’t understand a thing. Normality isn’t shattered with a sudden blow as one might imagine; the descent into delirium and indecipherability is slow and relentless. 

The direction and editing follow the same rhythm of the story, becoming increasingly unsettling, prey to schizophrenia that has made its way in with measured bites until the absurd finale arrives. While you're still wondering what the hell that guy had to smile about, you realize you’ve seen something mind-blowing.

If halfway through it already seems like the situation is beginning to get weird, don’t worry, it will get worse later on.