Ben Wheatley’s second film, after the violent suburban crime drama Down Terrace, was a little too strong a brew for cinema audiences, but the odd mixture of espionage drama, road movie and satanic horror has built up a well-deserved cult following. Roughly shot, and peppered with extreme violence by any standards, Kill List features Neil Maskell as Jay, whose pal lures him back into the hit-man game, with vague mutterings about a previous job gone wrong. But as they methodically work their way through a kill list, Wheatley’s film moves from a straight thriller to something far more macabre, ending in a climax that compares to The Wicker Man in terms of its baroque madness. Kill List never properly explains what’s happening, and leaves the audience as confused as the characters, but it’s a powerful little film that makes up for in imagination what it lacks in production values.
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