Now I must clarify, I didn't wholly dislike Kill List. It is a master class in suspense and tension. It's just that it got to a certain point, about three quarters of the way through, when the turn of events made me go 'what the f***?'. And not in a good way.
It starts off very ordinary. Husband and wife Jay and Shel (Neil Maskell and MyAnna Buring) are going through a rough patch. Jay hasn't worked as a sales rep for eight months and it's putting a strain on their marriage. His friend and colleague Gal (Michael Smiley) comes to dinner with his new girlfriend Fiona (Emma Fryer) and persuade him to go back to work. It quickly becomes obvious that they are not actually sales reps but hit men.
The two embark on a job that involves three kills but there is something odd about this job. The man that hired them isn't quite what he seems and neither is Fiona.
*spoiler alert* All well and good, tension building nicely, lots of intrigue, then bam from out of nowhere comes this straw-mask wearing cult who dance around naked and make human sacrifices. It all gets a bit silly from then on, although there is a brutally perverse twist at the end. I'm not adverse to a curve ball in a plot, far from it, but I just didn't get it and it disappointed me to the point of feeling cross.
It is extremely violent in places - at one point I had my hands over my eyes and my fingers in my ears but that's not why I didn't like it. Maybe it just wasn't for me.
I'm going to give it 55% because of the first three quarters. It's got 74% from users on IMDb but no Metacritic score yet presumably because it's on a limited release. On Rotten Tomatoes it's got 82% from critics although not enough for a consensus and 60% from the audience.
Sorry for the delay but I cant "post" on this from the iPhone. I can enter the text but then the post button just wont work - it'll be an apple incompatibility thing but it doesn't matter.
I can see why you might be a bit confused by me thinking Jay's wife is on the list. I kind of thought she was on it "by default". This allows her to put herself in the right position to be killed (at the cottage, at the right time, with the right person (Jay)). She can then become the "hunchback", allowing Jay to fulfil his role in front of the rest of the group and become "king".
So, so much to infer... I think the view might have to work too hard for this one.
Posted by: Simon Pudsey | 09/29/2011 at 08:42 PM
Jay's wife was on the Kill List? Must have missed that bit. The suicide pact sort of makes sense but I'm not really buying it.
And yes. Kiev is a mystery.
Posted by: Rev Stan | 09/19/2011 at 09:23 PM
well... stop me when this falls apart, but, in my opinion those on the kill list had all put themselves on it as part of the suicide cult of which they (and Jay) were members. Their thanks is because this takes them out of their personal self hatred (in the case of the Librarian this is his pornographic habits and in the case of Jay's wife this is her marriage to Jay). I'm still not sure about Kiev though.
Posted by: Simon Pudsey | 09/19/2011 at 09:04 PM
The biggest thing that is bugging me is why Jay's victims thanked him when he was about to kill them.
Posted by: Rev Stan | 09/18/2011 at 09:18 AM
I'll completely agree with the WTF? shift from thriller to horror. It was a truly odd moment. I would also agree that it was hard to fathom. The lack of explanation was a topic that vexed both Josh and I in the car on the way back from B'ham. We were both quite desperate to know what exactly did happen in Kiev. However I did manage to extract a story from the disparate bits and pieces but I'm left struggling with the death of Gal. In essence the key line for me was the one delivered by "The Librarian" who grabbed Jay whilst Gal was off upstairs and said "He doesn't know who you are does he?". From this point we can be fairly sure that Jay is complicit in the activities of the cult - hence his survival in the tunnels. Unfortunately you have to work way too hard to get the rest of the story pieced together and I think that is quite a detraction from a piece of art. If you want an answer for a particular bit then let me know - I think I worked most of it out however this film is a bit like a Haruki Murakami novel; intensely artistic but not necessarily easy to enjoy.
Posted by: Simon Pudsey | 09/16/2011 at 09:58 PM