Kill List. 2011. UK. Directed by Ben Wheatley. Written by Wheatley and Amy Jump. With Neil Maskell, MyAnna Buring and Michael Smiley. 35mm. 95 min.
Ben Wheatley’s Kill List, cowritten and edited with his filmmaking partner Amy Jump, is a three-way genre mashup of family drama, crime thriller, and psychological horror film. The first entry in Wheatley’s British folklore trilogy (with Sightseers and A Field in England), Kill List follows a troubled man entering a disturbing new world quite different from his own. Jay is a former soldier-turned-hitman who comes out of retirement years after his last, botched job because he’s desperate for money. Already plagued by PTSD, Jay quickly unravels as his new assignment sends him directly into the heart of darkness. This film is unbearably tense, as Wheatley tautly weaves the terrible violence Jay inflicts and endures with the increasingly bizarre, ritualistic situations and characters he encounters as he works his way down the kill list. The ultimate goal, though? To be free.