Ben
Wheatley’s Kill List is a 2011 horror
film, hyped to be a resurrector and reanimator of British Cinema which apparently has been the
victim of a ‘chronic medical condition’. However, I find this view unsatisfactory. Although
British Cinema has always struggled to reach the first ranks of world cinema, it’s
never stagnated or deteriorated; the previous decade saw the likes of Moon, Layer Cake, 28 Days Later,
The Wind that Shakes the Barley and
the list could go on. So why it has fallen on Ben Wheatley’s humble, and
comparatively obscure, sophomore effort to project the entire nation’s film industry
to global stardom, baffles me.
One
can only give the bare essentials of the plot without spoiling the many twists
and turns the narrative provides. The film starts with a violent argument
between a husband and wife, over money and work. Shel (MyAnna Buring) has had
enough of her lazy husband, who’s been without work for eight months, and who shows
no sign of securing another job. Jay (Neil Maskell), an Iraq war veteran,
blames his bad back, which only an expensive jacuzzi can cure. Shel shouts
back “It’s all in your head”.
The
(verbal) violence with which the film starts will escalate, and spill over as
the narrative progresses, reaching dire depths of hyperbolic ghastliness, as
bodies are hacked to pieces and bludgeoned to pulp. In a similar vein, the plot
itself and the genres the film encapsulates, are similarly chopped apart,
mangled, and reincorporated to create a movie that is at once eerily familiar
and grotesquely alien. Allusions to previous films abound, and most of them
British. The brilliantly tense domestic scenes of the first act recall the
kitchen sink dramas of the 50s and 60s. The second act, which follows the two
leads carrying out contracted killings, reeks of Taranatino and Guy Ritchie,
and the ever-so-slightly-ridiculous third act seems only explicable as a
post-modern supplication to one British horror classic in particular, but to
name which one would spoil the surprise.
Because
of its pastiche nature, there is a lot here that will leave most viewers
scratching their heads. The plot does go to some very unexpected places and many
characters do things that are inexplicable. I have only seen the film once, and
perhaps re-watching it might give some answers, but I highly doubt it. The main
theme here is violence, and, as Kill List
shows, violence takes many forms. It
operates when a wife screams at her lay about husband, when a soldier fights a
war, when Catholics and Protestants battle in Ireland, when two best friends solve
their disagreements with a childish wrestle, when a cat kills a rabbit and leaves
the entrails as an offering to its keepers, or when man repeatedly smashes
another man’s skull in with a hammer. Violence
is never ordered, and never meditated, it gets out of control, and so does Kill List. And this makes for a riveting
and chilling film, which, whilst not able to bear the entire burden of British
Cinema on its back, is still able to breathe some new life into its Horror
genres, and it does this in a wonderfully British way.
