Sometimes the most effective way to scare isn’t a deranged psychopath or murderous monster, but just the creeping sense that things “aren’t quite right” under the apparently normal surface of everyday life. At its most devastating, this is something Kill List understands all too well. Things begin ordinarily enough as we focus on Jay (Neil Maskell), an ex-solider lacking direction and haunted by his traumatic memories of combat. His home life is splintering around him and his marriage to wife Nel (MyAnna Buring) is plagued by constant conflict over money. It’s at this point that best friend Gal (Michael Smiley) approaches Jay with a lucrative job offer: the two accept a “kill list” of three targets they must find and execute, but, as they work their way through the list, events take an increasingly sinister turn. At first, Kill List feels like it’s going to play out like an unusually dark hitman film, but it soon becomes clear that director Ben Wheatley is taking his story somewhere altogether more horrific.
One of Kill List’s greatest strengths lies in its intriguing blend of multiple genres. Equally well-scripted scenes of suburban family drama and crime thriller sit side by side, but everything is focused through the prism of the horror genre. An unsettling trio of visceral sound design, uncomfortably jumpy editing and an ominous score give even the most mundane of family scenes a feeling of growing dread. The result is a film that feels like a horror film even when nothing particularly disturbing is happening on screen, and director Ben Wheatley deserves credit for holding the unnerving tone so consistently. The horror lurks convincingly behind normality, making it all the more effective. This is a world where hitmen operate from pleasant suburban homes, librarians compile torture films alongside books, and violence is always bubbling close under the surface.
Kill List’s horror elements grow throughout the film, at first creeping in subtly, and then exploding into a full on horror film in the film’s final act. Without saying too much and spoiling the plot, this is a payoff that will either thrill or frustrate depending on the viewer. Personally, I can’t help but feel the film loses its more unique charms once the scares become overt. It’s a final act dramatic rather than subtle, and sadly it sees Kill List trade in a lot of its unsettling under-the-skin chills in favour of cheaper, more generic shocks. That being said, it’s a well directed and explosive climax, sure to please horror aficionados. Wheatley has set out to create something bleakly harrowing that will linger with audiences as they stumble out of the cinema into the darkened streets outside, and he’s pulled that off with a confidence you sadly don’t always see in British genre films. This is a worthy, and at times inventive, addition to the British horror canon.