FrightFest 2011 Review: Kill List

• 25th Aug 2011

Jay is an ex military type turned family man. He lives in the ‘burbs with his wife and young son. Right off the bat we learn that life is not happy as they family are a bit skint, thanks to Jay not having worked for 8 months (although his wife doesn’t seem to be doing much herself).

Enter close friend Gal who brings a job opportunity to the table for the two men. Taking on the Kill List job; Jay and Gal go about their work which seems to start off well enough, but slowly starts to take odd twists and turns along the way with Jay becoming all the more of a loose cannon along the way (letting his temper dictate what he does and doesn’t do along the way).

Kill list broods within its lead character. You can almost feel his blood boil in any given situation as he uncovers more and more along the way and takes to committing some pretty awful and graphic violent acts.

But the time you get to the end the film is boiled so high that you wonder just how it is that they can end this film. And when it does end it ends very abruptly leaving the audience to fill in most of the gaps themselves about what has happened and why.

As this is screening at the FrightFest this year I do wonder if anyone else is going to come away from the film with a sense of Déjà vu.  I ended up comparing the end of A Serbian Film & The Last Exorcism to his film. Kill List has a shock and also a strong sense of the bizarre about it and it is a stronger film all round throughout, expertly directed by Ben Wheatley and well played by its cast. I’m sure this is the type of lead role that Danny Dyer thinks he’s portraying when he does half his films. Neil Maskell shows you how it’s really done.

Kill List will be screening at FrightFest on Sunday 28th at 20:50hrs.

Steven Hurst