There's a quote from former Los Angeles Times chief film critic Charles Champlin in New York Times comedy critic Jazon Zinoman's wonderful, insightful, pithy new book on the creation of Hollywood's modern horror, Shock Value:
"Having paid my critical respects, I must add that I found Rosemary's Baby a most desperately sick and obscene motion picture whose ultimate horror--in my very private opinion--was that it was made at all....Its surfaces are too accurate and Miss Farrow's anguish too real to let us be comfortable in some never-never land of escape."
The movie Champlin is referring to, of course, became a game changer for Hollywood, helping to usher in the new age of Hollywood horror. But the point here with his quote is that once in a while one sits in a dark movie theater witnessing a horror masterpiece, a film that has the potential to be influential to a whole genre in spite or because of it being a nasty little number. Such a movie is Ben Wheatley's Kill List.
But to call Kill List simply a horror movie is not doing it justice. It's really three subgenres rolled into one. What starts off as seemingly British kitchen sink drama morphs into existential hit man territory and drops you off at British satanic cult horror. It's as if Mike Leigh or Ken Loach were remaking Get Carter or Point Blank as a horror movie in the vein of The Wicker Man. That fly-on-the-wall camera that documents the arguments within the proletarian household in social realist films is there. Sure, it's not exactly depicting Eastenders in a cramped one-room flat--the townhouse and amenities tell you right off the bat this family of three is doing well--but the claustrophobic close-ups and the intensity, the anger, it's all there. That anger is manifested in the form of one very angry young man, Jay, played with sheer intensity by Neil Maskell. After spending most of the first third of the film arguing with his wife and occasionally being a loving dad to his son, Jay's skills at termination are employed by a shady, mysterious organization (aren't they always so in these hit man melodramas?) with the insistence of "business partner" and one-time war buddy, Gal (played by stand-up comic Michael Smiley) an old friend of the family's and all-around jovial bloke who pulls our hero back into doing the devil's work (or is it God's? He works in mysterious ways, you know) one more time.
The terms "a new assignment" and "a big payoff" are surely the kiss of death in such a thankless profession and, by the way, in any thriller with sweeping Shakespearean or Ancient Greek overtures. And it's with such trepidation that our hero accepts this new assignment that will place him squarely in, as the press release promises, "the heart of darkness."
Kill Listis a brilliantly crafted film and a potential game changer in a tired, typically limiting, cyclical genre like horror. It helps that Kubrickian flourishes abound: For starters, there's a soundtrack that makes even the most mundane act of domesticity seem downright foreboding. Sparse and tense, it compliments a script that also veers into early Paul Schrader screenwriting territory, particularly in the captivating relationship between the two hit men. Lean, fierce and flirting with self-destruction it's this middle section as they go about their business that's the heart of the film: Two guys. Three hits. A one-way ticket to hell. So taken was this reviewer by the couple's camaraderie that he could have easily spent days following them around, only to parachute out before reaching final destination.
One can only hope Kill List inspires other filmmakers to think outside the jack-in-the box full of cheap scares when it comes to horror. God knows the genre can use an influx of innovation, something else besides the old exorcism bit that's currently possessing the box office. You want to see true horror? It's not paranormal. It's pretty mundane, actually.
And now that I've paid my critical respects...
It's precisely because of its everyday strokes, because it hits close to home, "its surfaces are too accurate," to borrow a much more eloquent descriptor, that Kill List is vicious to the point of ceasing to be entertainment or enjoyable in the way that you expect to be thrilled on a night out watching a scary movie. Kill List is beyond scary. It's sadistic, not in the juvenile way that the cartoonish and thoroughly enjoyable Human Centipede: First Sequence pushed the envelope of, um, taste, but sadistic in how it forces a mirror on society. Instead of helping us forget for a couple of hours, it demands that we don't. Worse yet, it manipulates you into staying put in your seat--eyes wide open like an audience on the Ludovico Technique--with hope that it'll all come to a satisfying conclusion and make sense at the end, like a movie should, and not like real life, where things don't always end well, justice is not always served and sometimes evil lives to fight another day. Maybe it's just bad timing as scenes of disturbing nature--and no, not the hammering of a hand here or the pulping of a face there, but acts of violence against that most vulnerable segment of our society--are too much of a grim reminder of the real life horrors being committed by real life monsters who abuse their positions as role models (a certain assistant coach comes to mind), figures of authority and otherwise "trustworthy" adults. Yet, despite the unwelcomed dose of reality, it's a testament to Mr. Wheatley's gift as a director that the most disturbing scene in the movie doesn't even happen onscreen. In a brilliant stroke of direction, we only see the main character's reaction to the unspeakable horror occurring in front of him. All we're left with to fill in our imagination is what we hear and a quick glimpse of the set design from hell.
Ultimately, the movie's Pinteresque attempts at ambiguity (Why the other two people on the list? Is the organization doing good or evil?) are completely obliterated from intellectual exploration by its own vicious ending. Instead of emerging out of a haze of awe and wonderment as to what it all could have meant, one's brain is left paralyzed from the emotional beating. You realize that it's not just our hero but also you, the viewer, who's been emotionally had from this investment as if the filmmakers gleefully said, "Hey, what's the most f***** up thing we can do to our audience? Yeah, let's do that!" and just decided to end the movie on that note.
But maybe it's just this reviewer. Maybe it's just this reviewer who is in another place in his life and is tired of the weekly bombardment of heinous crimes committed against the defenseless. And because of that, maybe this movie is just not for me, despite its unmitigated genius.
Perhaps someday audiences will laugh at how quaint and silly the horror of Kill List is, like modern audiences do at Rosemary's Baby. Perhaps I will too. Somehow, though, I seriously doubt it.
Kill List opens on February 3 at Cinefamily for a special one-week run.
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