Ben Wheatley's Kill List tells the all-too-familiar tale of a contract killer pulled out of semi-retirement and tasked with performing "one last job". Jay (Neil Maskell) has been out of work for an extended length of time due to a work-related back injury he sustained during a mysterious rendezvous in Kiev. When money problems place pressure on his personal life, he accepts a proposition from long-time friend and fellow hit-man Gal (Michael Smiley, perhaps more widely known as Tyres on Edgar Wright's BBC series "Spaced"). What starts out as a seemingly straight-forward task gradually devolves into something much more terrifying as Jay's aggressive personality starts to surface.
The structure of the movie is essentially comprised of five acts or parts. The first part sets up the characters and the premise of the film and ends with the two men receiving their "Kill List". This list consists of three individuals they are to eliminate, each of which make up the next three parts. The film culminates in a finale that even mentioning its existence risks spoiling the film for those who have not seen it. While I'm not going to explicitly spoil any events in the film, I highly recommend that you stop reading at this point if you have even the slightest desire to check it out.
One of the more distinguishing features of Kill List is its minimalist style of dialog and its delivery of exposition as a result. Much of the dialog is semi-improvised, bringing a strange mumblecore-esque feel to a thriller. Background information about the characters is only revealed in small snips of conversation, alluding to but never actually explaining anything about the aforementioned "Kiev incident". This choice to shroud the past of these characters in mystery works really well, similarly to how not completely showing the monster in a horror movie actually benefits the atmosphere.
Much like last year's Nicolas Winding Refn thriller Drive, Kill List is very much an explosively violent art house thriller cleverly disguised as something it's not. Things get extremely bloody and stomach-churning quickly enough to catch you completely off your guard. Even the style of brutalization very closely mirrors the style seen in Refn's work. The most disorienting shift in the film, however, happens in the final twenty minutes when the genre pulls a sharp turn and takes the action straight into cult horror à la The Wicker Man (more so original, less so Nic Cage remake). While this abrupt shift in tone might rub some the wrong way, it completely blew my mind. On repeat viewings, things that might have once been overlooked are now seen in a different light. Nothing impresses me more than clever foreshadowing disguised well enough as to not make the story predictable.
Although I really enjoyed the direction that the story takes in the end, my main complaint with the film is in the final few minutes. Without giving away the ending, I can say that Jay's final revelation does not feel earned when all is said and done. If there is a message, it might be one warning against man's violent nature but the movie doesn't give us time to reflect on the fact before the credits start rolling. It could have worked much better if the themes presented in the final scene were interspersed throughout the film rather than just thrown in at the end. However, this is but a small blemish on a film that could very well have made my top ten of 2011 had I seen it in time.
7.5/10
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