Killer Joe Review

• 2nd Nov 2012

“That’s what I love about these high school girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age,” declared Matthew McConaughey’s character David Wooderson in Dazed and Confused. Nearly 20 years on his delivery of that line came back to haunt me as I watched the now-middle aged McConaughey seduce Juno Temple’s childlike Dottie in Killer Joe.

Killer Joe repelled almost as many critics and viewers as it thrilled, and it’s easy to see why. Though Dottie is a very-legal 20, there’s a strong hint of paedophilia in her relationship with Joe, who prefers that they pretend they’re children during sex. Add to that a strong hint of incest, a matricide, a failed infanticide, father who sells his daughter to a hitman, Gina Gershon’s merkin and the Fried Chicken Scene to End All Fried Chicken Scenes and the result is cinematic Marmite. Love it or hate it, you will never hear the phrase ‘finger lickin’ good’ in quite the same way again.

This is definitely a nasty movie. Legendary director William Friedkin is not known for making nice films; unfortunately, of late he has also not been known for making must-see films. His last outing – 2006’s Bug – was, like Killer Joe, based on a stage play by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Tracy Letts. While hardly a critical failure, it failed to generate much of a buzz. At least the same can’t be said for Killer Joe.

For the prosecution, it is fair to say that a heavy pall of “red necks-ploitation” hangs over this movie like stink on a wet dog. Apart from Joe – a cop with a sideline in professional murder – the main characters are dirt-poor Texans who live in a trailer. Their days are filled with alcohol, fucking, and fucking each other over. Friedkin also can’t seem to resist the heavy-handed visual clichés of the Southern Gothic: ominous lightening flashes at appropriate moments; clusters of portentous white crosses caught in the headlights of a killer’s car; an incessantly barking dog straining at its leash; hot, sultry days and black-as-pitch rainy nights. It is a wonder that Friedkin resists showing sun-basking snakes and road kill.

On the other hand, if this family had an IQ point or an honest dollar between them this would be a different tale altogether. While Friedkin overdoes the Southern Gothic’s tropes, he’s also alive to its big themes – the desperation and venality born of poverty, the over-ripe sexuality, and old-time religion’s obsession with The Devil. Joe is not so much a character as he is the personification of evil, and it is to McConaughey’s credit that he manages to wrest a proper role from the jaws of cipher. And Friedkin elects not to stray too far from the story’s roots as a stage play; we may be in Texas, but it’s a claustrophobic Texas of basements, trailers, truck cabs and car interiors. Even during the one chase scene (which, alas, culminates in a poorly choreographed beating), Chris’s run is that of a rat in a maze.

The plot, such as it is, focuses on an unlovable family of loveless, greedy, witless losers. Drug-dealing Chris discovers that his alcoholic mother Adele has stolen $6,000 worth of drugs from him, and after he violently confronts her she turfs him out. Chris’s booze-addled father, Ansel (a lovely turn from Thomas Haden Church) readily agrees that Chris should hire Joe Cooper to kill Adele for her $50,000 life insurance policy. Chris’ kid sister Dottie is the sole beneficiary; somewhat surprising, given that Adele tried to kill Dottie when Dottie was a baby. The plan is to split the money four ways, between Chris and Dottie, and Ansel and his adulterous wife Sharla. Of course, this is after Joe gets his $25,000 fee. What could possibly go wrong?

For a start, it turns out that Joe is the manifestation of Chris’s darkest desires and impulses – and once out of the bottle, there’s no putting them back. Like Robert Mitchum’s similarly-attired Rev. Harry Powell in Night of the Hunter, Joe has an almost supernatural quality: even Ansel’s aggressive dog stops barking at his approach. “I’ll leave right now and you’ll never see me again. Your call,” Joe tells Chris, but Chris has summoned up something that cannot so easily be dismissed. Joe is going to make Chris’ dreams come true but in his stead: Chris wants to kill his mother, but it will be Joe who does the deed. Chris has a crush on Dottie, but it’s Joe who forms a sexual relationship with her. Chris wants the money from his mother’s insurance policy, but if the plan comes off it will be Joe who benefits the most. And so on.

There are also parallels between Joe and Mitchum’s other great villain, Max Cady in Cape Fear – although the relationship between Joe and Dottie is closer to that of De Niro and Juliette Lewis in the 1991 remake. (As an aside, can you name a better heir apparent to Lewis than Temple?) Joe’s sexuality is more thanatos than libido (which McConaughey gleefully exploits to the hilt during the aforementioned Fried Chicken Scene) and the acquiescence to his demand that Dottie be given to him ‘as a retainer’ provides just the bad juju nobody needed. “It might do her good,” reasons Ansel, presumably following the logic of every sacrificial virgin’s father throughout the ages. What Ansel doesn’t realise is that Sharla is right – Dottie is not like the rest of them. When Adele called Dottie ‘a mistake’ she may not have meant simply a product of contraceptive failure.

Fortunately, however, Friedkin has in Temple an actress of immense talent and intelligence and he’s smart enough to let Killer Joe be her story. Dottie may well not be like the rest of the family, but she’s still a member of the family. “How are you gonna kill my mama?” she asks Joe. “That’s not appropriate dinner conversation, Dottie,” he says, the first hint of doubt around his eyes. But somehow, Temple manages to deliver that line in a way that makes Dottie seem like the prettiest, sweetest little thing you’ve ever seen.

DVD extras:

Cast and crew interviews
‘Killer Joe: On The Set’ featurette

Clare Moody