PTSD

British filmmaker Ben Wheatley’s second film opens as a domestic drama located in the financial insecurity of the recession-struck UK. An ostensibly upper middle-class couple bicker about how to spend the money they have left; he spends their cash on wine, and she reminds him that he didn’t even remember to pick up some toilet paper. By the start of the third act of the film, Kill List has completely become a horror film, with every image drenched in despair. This is one of those films that you know from early on cannot end well for some of those involved.

Jay (Neill Maskell), a former soldier still bitter about his tour of duty in Iraq, is now a contract killer. With this kind of profession, it helps that his wife Shel (MyAnna Buring) did a stint of her own in the Swedish army. With financial pressures being what they are Jay agrees to join his mate Gal (Michael Smiley) on his next job. They get a kill list with three individuals indicated as targets; each is introduced with large white latters splashed across a black screen. The money they get paid to take out these individuals is considerable, and their need for financial security is pressing. When Jay’s credit card is declined at a hotel, this point is underscored. Gal is increasingly concerned about this particular contract – why, for instance, does a victim thank them before he is killed? ­- whereas Jay, enraged by what he sees in the home of one target, becomes irrationally driven to complete the contract.

What happens after signals a considerable shift in expectations, if not in tone. Even from the opening scenes depicting the day-to-day and the tensions in Jay and Shels marriage, there’s a discomforting sense of foreboding which later translates into terror. Wheatley makes the family’s domestic existence seem as hostile as the contract killers’ work environment. The film’s leap from suspense drama to hard thriller and horror is entirely justifiable. In its final act, the film pays homage to specific thrillers and horrors that inspired it, and to elaborate on how Wheatley uses those texts to inform his own would spoil too much of the plot.

In telling the story of the two hit men with dark pasts and darker futures, Kill List is at once an exploration of the psychological tension experienced by those involved in warfare, tensions that don’t stay on the battlefield, and a brutal genre film that ranks as one of the year’s most uncomfortable viewing experiences.

Not to go off on a tangent, but I’m sometimes asked why one would watch and recommend “uncomfortable” viewing experiences. While I agree that one has to be cautious what one exposes oneself to – I will probably never watch A Serbian Film, for example – a film like Kill List is worth seeing because it does what it does without resorting to gratuity. It’s a disturbing film because of a committed cast, a writer-director who knows his genre heritage and cinematography by Laurie Rose that makes random night skies into harbingers of doom. The film succeeds on its own merits, and when it indeed becomes uncomfortable, it’s well earned. Kill List is not for sensitive viewers, but if you can get through the long exposition and appreciate the character rich first act, genre fans will not be disappointed. Everyone else should steer clear.