This, ladies and gentleman, is how you make a thriller properly. These days it is such commonplace to try to knock the tension all the way up from the get-go with some sort of opening hook, that the film never has anywhere to build to. Kill List is a rarity of true genius, starting at a low level of domestic drama and slowly building itself darker and stronger until it reaches a place that I never in my wildest dreams expected it to go.
As with the best films of this breed, the premise is simple; due to financial crisis a hit-man must take on another job where he is required to kill three targets, along with his best friend and partner. Of course nothing goes so smoothly and the film plays out this frightening tale of madhouse mayhem of Wicker Man proportions.
Grounding itself in a human relationship is the dynamic between these two men, Jay (Neil Maskell) and Gal (Michael Smiley). These two actors display a chemistry that is so honest and lived-in, never allowing the audience to question that these two have been close for many years. There's a brotherly affection between them that is instant, but as the film progresses they start to reveal the kind of passive tension that would come with years of friendship. Maskell's performance is the one that truly takes off though, as his character's mental stability comes under question through the brutality of his nature.
There's a morality study in the kind of men that would take this job underlying the whole thing, but that's not even necessary when what's on the surface is so remarkable. With each new target the tension ups itself to another level, but I was absolutely blown away by the final act. This is a final stretch that you honestly have to see to believe because I don't think words can really do it justice. Things are taken to such an extreme, but writer/director Ben Wheatley (the script was co-written by Amy Jump) plays it in a way that never seems absurd. I didn't at all question the legitimacy of these circumstances and I believe that in the hands of someone less capable it could have been a ridiculous sequence of events.
No, the final act is one of the most brutal, relentlessly unsettling stretches I've ever seen in cinema (and I am not one to use words like "ever" in reviews). I can't say that many films have truly disturbed me, but with the unique, frightening score, cinematography and grim circumstances this is one that got deeply under my skin. A must.
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