Something dark, unseen and unspeakable is slithering in suburbia in the new British horror film Kill List (dir: Ben Wheatley). Invisible tentacles constrict a family home, throttling the life from a marriage, twisting a father’s relationship with his son. Hidden mouths half-formed and demented feed upon material wealth sucking money dry until only the vacant husk of a man remains to gaze into the abyss of his empty Jacuzzi.
A wind turbine casts its shadow of modernity across the chattering classes, decking and barbeques. What elemental forces it has tapped into can only be guessed at but who cares when The X-Factor and Iraq are prime time viewing? Pure sinisterness is in the air and there is no escape for ex-soldier Jay, choked on post traumatic stress and forty grand down his domestic bliss withers on the vine of expensive plonk in blue plastic bags.
His Swedish wife, Shel is no shrinking violet. She’s served in the army and needs Jay to man up. Their life is a series of jump-cut arguments, reconciliation and fractured domestic bliss. Their son, Sammy is in the firing line between slanging matches over scatter cushions and bloody bedtime stories of Baghdad. Shel calls in backup, Jay’s best mate Gal and his new girlfriend Fiona.
Gal’s loveable, quiet sensitive. Gal kills people for a living. So does Jay. Shel’s eagerness for Jay to return to work suddenly takes on a chilling complexion. What does she say in Swedish into the telephone? The dinner party is excruciating. Northern Ireland and Iraq make uneasy small-talk. Jay can’t abide a measuring jug used for gravy, calls it a “chemistry set” and flips out when the conversation doesn’t go his way. Fiona looks like she’s walked out of a Hammer movie via human resources, the “Hatchet girl” who fires the unlucky ones in the current recession.
A trip to the bathroom is unexpected. Jay’s tantrum subsides like a cowboy built house. The booze and song flow and Jay takes on the hit. In the morning he apologises to his son and fries up a rabbit, an offering from his black cat. Shel watches him proud as punch as his masculinity returns with every mouthful. He’s off with Gal to kill four people: a priest, a librarian, an MP and a hunchback. Easy fare for the “Two musketeers.”
Faceless, nameless hotels await discussions about soap and rooms, marred by the indignity of cancelled credit cards. They are measured and professional until the awful truths of their targets are revealed. Why do they thank Jay when he finishes them? Gal doesn’t like it; Jay’s a slave to his tabloid upbringing, a Red Top avenger whose violence is unrelenting, “I don’t know where it comes from” he explains but he isn’t apologising.
This is a world where atmosphere is everything; allegory is constructed through snippets of information, a Christian group here, a snuff movie there. The audience are repelled and fascinated, horrified and amused as events unfold on and off screen. What came back with Jay from Iraq and later a botched job in Kiev? What pitiless blackness was unleashed in him or was it always there waiting for the right war to pull it out and spit it in the face of his victims? Or was coiled, greedy terror waiting at home patiently for him all the time? Kill List demands you find out.
Kill List is out in the US on Feb 3rd.