Kill List (Film Review)

2011 StudioCanal Limited
Directed by: Ben Wheatley; Written by: Ben Wheatley and Amy Jump
Starring: Neil Maskell, MyAnna Buring, and Michael Smiley
MPAA Rating: R; Running Time: 95 Minutes
The Nicsperiment Score: 7/10

Jay is constantly on edge, a hitman attempting to live a domestic life, trying to recover from an apparently disastrous mission that happened months before. His wife throws a dinner party, and his best friend and hitman collaborator, Sal, shows up with a new girlfriend...who draws a mysterious symbol on the back of Jay's bathroom mirror. The dinner party goes off the rails, as Jay's wife seems bitter, and Jay seems full of rage. Sal has a new mission for them, though, and Sal kisses his wife and young son goodbye, and finally goes back to work. However, the job is strange. The client unexpectedly cuts Jay's hand open, along with his own, and makes a blood pact as Jay is assigned three men to kill. When Jay starts to work his way through the kill list, things get even stranger. The victims actually thank Jay before he kills them...and they seem to be involved in nefarious activities that only lead Jay into more rage-filled, vengeful killing. Soon, everything unspools...revealing a horror Jay and Sal never imagined.
2011's Kill List is a unique to say the least. Ben Wheatley's film paints the faintest of outlines, and slaps the viewer's hand away as opposed to holding it. Jay's past is only faintly touched upon and the viewer has to use their own imagination to decide what happened in the hitman's previous mission, though it is heavily hinted that it resulted in a child's death. Nearly this entire film is subtext, which is unique considering the subject matter and tone shift from patient and methodical crime thriller to high octane folk horror. As such, I do wish a little more detail was filled in. At the same time, this is a story about a man, prone to violence, who only seems at peace...or his version of peace when he is killing, and the rest of the film can be taken as the metaphysical shading around that. Too much detail would destroy the symbolism.
Either way, Kill List is a distinct and frightening film, featuring some shocking, but well-spaced moments of violence, and a uniquely unsettling tone, the rare film that sports a minimalist sheen that seems to house untold, bleakly terrifying depths underneath.