Kill List (Wheatley, 2011): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 8.30pm
We listed this on its release and heartily recommend those of you who haven't seen it catching it at the BFI, who are also screening the film on the 27th and 28th April as part of the Made in Britain season. Details here.
Here is the five-star Time Out review:
'Ben Wheatley’s
self-funded debut feature ‘Down Terrace’ was an odd beast. It was hard
to tell how much of the wordy, ultraviolent gangster comedy’s
undeniable power was intentional and how much was derived from its
micro-budgeted on-a-wing-and-a-prayer production. Well, here’s the
answer: on the strength of ‘Kill List’, Wheatley might be the most
idiosyncratic and exciting filmmaker the UK has produced since Shane
Meadows.
Much of ‘Kill List’ will be familiar to anyone who caught ‘Down
Terrace’ during its brief run last year: the semi-improvised dialogue
and naturalistic performances, the close, documentary-style photography
and the deep-seated sense of suburban moral decay. But it’s altogether
more confident: where the earlier film leavened the darker moments
with slapstick and satire, ‘Kill List’ is an unrelentingly grim ride
into the bleakest imaginable terrain, its only humour black beyond
belief.
For the first 45 minutes, this seems like a fairly standard
killer-for-hire set-up. The editing and the audio palette are unusual
and unsettling, the performances noticeably superior and the mood
unrelentingly claustrophobic, but the plot seems to follow a
predictable template. Then something happens – no clues except to say
that it involves a hammer – and ‘Kill List’ takes a sharp left-turn
into no man’s land.
There will be some who find the resulting series of increasingly brutal
and dreamlike events hard to process, and a number of plot points
remain unexplained even as the credits roll. But allow the film to take
hold and its power is inescapable: the effect is like placing your
head in a vice and waiting as it inexorably closes.
It’s hard to remember a British movie as nerve-shreddingly effective
since ‘Dead Man’s Shoes’ in 2004. Like that film, ‘Kill List’ may not
make the impact it deserves upon initial release. But this is a grower,
a film which lingers long in the memory: look for it on ‘Best of
British’ lists for a long time to come.'
Tom Huddleston
Here is the trailer.
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