Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 176: Thu Jun 25

Kill List (Wheatley, 2011): Prince Charles Cinema, 5.30pm

Presented at the Prince Charles Cinema on 35mm with a special 15th Anniversary Post-Film Q&A with Director Ben Wheatley, as part of BLEAK WEEK 2026. Full details here.

Time Out review:
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.
 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 (and above) is the trailer. 

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