Kill List - Nek Minnit

This genre-bending hitman/bromance/romance/drama/horror film has confused and wowed audiences in equal measure since its release in 2011. I admit to belonging more to the former description, and everything you think you know in the first half gets blown the fuck out of the water before the film is finished. While initially more sinister than scary, researching the film's meaning actually manages to make the whole experience more haunting.

Our leading man Jay (Neil Maskell) and his best mate Gal (Michael Smiley) work as assassins to support their respective partners/families. They get in with one bunch of oddball clients who (after signing the contract in blood) set them three kills - a priest, a librarian and an MP. After working through a couple of them, Jay's past (a botched mission in Kiev) comes back to haunt him and shit gets cray. Real cray. While scoping the MP's country estate, they see some  pagan ritual types and from then, Jay, his friends and family get pulled through the shit.

The three lead performances were pretty astonishing. Maskell manages to humanise a character who is constantly fluctuating between extremes - a violent, angry bastard and a loving, family man. Smiley provides the yin to his yang, granting us with some wry smiles on our collective descent into insanity. Jay's wife (MyAnna Buring) holds her own too, playing the mix of vulnerable and fiery that the script requires with aplomb. Ben Wheatley's direction folds out in a dreamy manner, indie visuals and atmosphere languidly developing until extreme acts of violence break through the ethereal texture. His script (written with his partner Amy Jump and partly ad-libbed by the cast) is a layered affair, which develops as one goes into the underlying meanings. I found ... most helpful. I had no idea what I was watching between about the 70 minute mark and the finale, but the above reading (which I'll call compulsory for all viewers following this experience) developed a creeping fear in me and a begrudging respect.

My old friend Albert von Hammerschmidt OBE had this input to offer:
Do you enjoy having your mind fucked?
Do you yearn for that glorious empty feeling experienced after watching a movie that can be neither explained nor described?
Do you like a good gore fest?
If you answered yes to any of these questions then Kill List is for you. Superficially it has great gore and action sequences, but this is by no means a superficial film. It has layers upon layers of meanings, which are not resolved for you.
It starts as a gang/crime/assassination movie with strange lines and unexplained actions that constantly build a feeling of genuine unease that culminates into a sublime genre shift into full blown horror.
The on screen chemistry is great especially between the lead and Gal (who by the way gave one of the best performances in a horror film I have seen in many a moon). They constantly show these little quirks they have as a team, like stealing the soap and shampoo from the places they stay at, and having genuine all round college-calibre banter.
Watch this movie to be challenged, puzzled and yearning for more. A high, hearty recommendation.

It's not an easy watch, but it is a rewarding one. You'll walk away disturbed on a level you didn't know you could be. There's a proficiency in this film that most independents lack, and it benefits accordingly. While not much of a jump scare film, it is undoubtedly a horror. And a damn solid one at that - 8 out of 10 nude cultists.