Kill List (Ben Wheatley,2011): UK

Reviewed by Angelica Silva. Viewed at AFI Fest 2011.

The film, Kill List was a shocking sick humor, horror story that i will never forget. Ben Wheatley, director of films Ideal, Down Terrace, and Steve Coogan: Inside Story, brings us all to fist clenching nervousness in this film. The expectations of this film and the plot are very normal. I expected it to be a normal hit man movie. The out come was very surprising and definitely not what I pictured. I think this movie has a deeper meaning than being just a hit man movie. I believe it is a story about Karma.

This bloody heart stopping film starts off with an unbalanced family arguing about money problems. Husband, Jay (Neil Maskell) and Shel (MyAnna Buring)  recover from the fighting as their son hears everything and they are expecting company. Two friends who appear to be dating, arrive at their home for dinner. Jay and Shel began fighting again and their friends do not seem surprised. They take the couple’s son to bed and there is a scene where the woman friend, Fiona (Emma Fryer) is entering their bathroom and strangely cuts a symbol into the cardboard in the back of their mirror. Fiona and Gal (Michael Smiley) left because of the fighting.

The next day, Jay makes his way to Gal’s house and oddly and suddenly, Fiona has left him. They then plot a meeting with someone. When they go, something eerie happens. An older man gets a knife and cuts their palms. Then drips their blood on a piece of writing paper. They arrive at a hotel and plot killings. The two are hit men. Gal seems to be the more calm one.  Every time they kill someone. Jay wants to do it viciously and painfully. Gal would rather get it done easily. The footage of the killings are very eye opening and heart-aching.

Never have I seen a hit man movie so gruesome and open. The more the men kill, the more gruesome it gets.

They come home for a while and Shel tells Jay she is going to take their son to a cottage and stay there until the job is done. The last kill was a group of some kind of devil worshipers sacrificing a member. When the leader is shot by Jay, the worshipers flee. Knives flying and skin crawling screaming. Yelling, they chase Jay and Gal through the woods and into a cave. They end up stabbing and killing Gal. Surprisingly, Jay gets home. Home, only to see that there are dozens of torches left on his lawn. He ran in his house to find his wife and son.

He is captured by the group and sent outside. His wife is now nowhere in sight. He is set up to be in a knife fight with what appears to be a hunch back. Jay wins. Sort of.  He hears laughter from the hunchback. Ex-girlfriend of Gal, Fiona lifts her mask out of the worshiping crowd. Jay, suspicious of the laughter, lifts the mask only to find his wives face. Knowing she is not a hunchback, lifts the sheet to find his son stabbed to death.  Shel and Fiona were setting up the men the entire time. That is why i believed it was a story about Karma.