Kill List

2011 Directed by Ben Wheatley

Horror Marathon 2024 Day 16 Film 32

Two contract killers are hired to kill a few people with increasingly odd circumstances. As they go about their laundry list of "jobs" the targets seem almost pleased that they're being killed. All of this has echoes of some 90s edgy thriller. There's a bit of an odd morality to the film- as bad men are increasingly forced to deal with more wicked levels of horror. Like they're descending circles of hell, each step of the way until confronted with their own evils.

Unfortunately there's a large portion of the film that deals with the main character being a complete ass-- drinking himself stupid and behaving badly. At times I forgot that this is listed as a horror film- feeling self serious and tedious aside from the level of violence being oddly out of place for a typical crime thriller. By the time the ending comes it doesn't feel like there's any reason to care about him- and the guttural punch is a twist that was only loosely reasoned. It's an exploitative rug to pull out from the audience to hide how hollow the rest of the film was.