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Kill List

Started by CaledonianGonzo, September 02, 2011, 02:32:20 PM

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CaledonianGonzo

Do you have the BALLS for it?






(I don't).

BlodwynPig

If the trailer is anything to go by its nothing special...at all. What's the hype?

CaledonianGonzo

Well - the reviews have been sterling and apparently it is authentically bleak and unsettling.  A few folk I follow in Twitter have been almost-traumatised by it.

http://www.totalfilm.com/reviews/cinema/kill-list

But I'm too much of a wimp in this day and age for anything stronger than Michael Winner's Parting Shots.

Funcrusher

It got a glowing review in Time Out this week. May check it out this weekend. I tend to be a bit cautious with reviews of British films by new up and coming directors as reviewers tend to feel they have to support our own new talent and cheer on plucky little films squaring up to Hollywood and so on.

BlodwynPig


Neville Chamberlain

Going to see this later today...

Annoyed.  Really want to see this but it's not being shown anywhere near where I live.
Hopefully it'll get a wider release soon.

Harpo Speaks

Quote from: CaledonianGonzo on September 02, 2011, 02:44:59 PM
authentically bleak and unsettling.

Well it was filmed in Sheffield...

But yes, unsettling is certainly a word I'd use to describe it, the film has this tension to it that just builds and builds, I found the whole atmosphere of it very claustrophobic.

non capisco

Saw it today and found it to be a pretty effective slice of nastiness. I didn't like the directors' previous 'Down Terrace' much which i thought was hampered by some ropey acting and clunky handling of some big tonal shifts, neither of which are a problem here at all. I wish the Cineworld e-letter hadn't stated
Spoiler alert
see this if you're a fan of The Wicker Man
[close]
as it lessened the surprise of how it starts to turn out. Loved the scene where
Spoiler alert
they're hiding in the woods behind the MP's mansion and you gradually start to hear a faint, haunting melody getting louder and louder as the cult approaches. The melody was used on the score in one of the earliest scenes and I'd half-remembered it because it sounded slightly incongruous then.
[close]
A genuinely creepy and effective scene before
Spoiler alert
all the grand guignol stuff at the end.
[close]

And the last scene might even
Spoiler alert
give The Mist a run for its money in the super-bleakness stakes
[close]
.

No matter how tough the going got I still have trouble seeing Michael Smiley as anyone other than Tyres though.

Ja'moke

Had to drive to Leeds to see this film but it was definitely worth it. It starts out as a pretty standard thriller about two hitmen, darkly comic in places, and you can kind of see where things are going, and then about half-way through it takes a sudden turn in to all out weirdness, and just piles on the bleak and disturbing. Captivating.

BlodwynPig

Phenomenal film from start to finish. An also a very odd film. Not bizarre, just strangely constructed, with beautiful direction underpinning an altogether more sinister and brutal plot.

I agree with non capisco about the best part of the film. But without the earlier scenes, even the first scenes, the ending would not have the same power. Most films would probably have the
Spoiler alert
paganistic ritual
[close]
underpinning the story, but this is added as an after dinner mint, laced with strychnine. Guessing what the
Spoiler alert
Hunchback
[close]
was, did not spoil the ultimate shock of the reveal. What madness was going on here - we don't (thankfully) get an explanation.

lipsink

I loved how the creepy music and strange editing kept appearing during the early domestic scenes where nothing out of the ordinary was really happening. It felt like an evil force was editing the movie. The really intense score being used in such a way was quite similar to the opening scenes of 'There Will Be Blood'.

Great performances too.
Spoiler alert
And the disastrous dinner party was hilarious. I was slightly disappointed with the ending though. After so much build up and sense of 'something's not quite right here' from the very start I was expecting a few more answers.
[close]

BlodwynPig

Quote from: lipsink on September 09, 2011, 01:47:36 PM
Great performances too.
Spoiler alert
And the disastrous dinner party was hilarious. I was slightly disappointed with the ending though. After so much build up and sense of 'something's not quite right here' from the very start I was expecting a few more answers.
[close]

Phenomenal score. Utterly terrifying bit in the
Spoiler alert
woods, when those noises and then voices and then screams occur - Blair Witch on acid
[close]
. Could this open a door for Kill List 2 - or is it better to be a stand-alone
Spoiler alert
with no answers provided
[close]

Seeing this tonight.  Pleased to discover that the multiplex up the road is actually showing this.
Can't wait. 

Hope I'm not disappointed.  After the initial universal nosh-off from the critics, people are starting to come out of the woodwork and say that it's not as good as they're making out, and that it gets fairly pretentious towards the end.

But you lot on here still seem very impressed with it, so that's good enought for me.  Roll on 8:45.

BlodwynPig

Too right. Critics of the film must present clear and sensible reasons why they dislike the film. I have described my love of the film above. Pretentious it is not - it's a fucking film. That only happens in real life or in knowingly referential or backward looking films. This is a masterpiece and the film of the year (The Skin That I Live in coming a close second).

(Yes, you may call this post pretentious, as it is...but not the film)

Feralkid

Saw this today with Mrs Feral, both of us guessing the ending about 20 minutes into it.   I'm stunned that this is getting such serious attention, it's a competent but wholly uninspired and often painfully pretentious art-house horror flick.   The fact that something
Spoiler alert
occult
[close]
is afoot is signalled way too early, the pretentious tone is grating (oh look, JUMP CUTS, see how edgy and provocative we're being), and the absence of any even vaguely relatable or sympathetic characters makes it impossible to give a monkeys about their fate. 

In Rosemary's Baby, for example, it's hard not to sympathise with poor Rosemary and so tension and terror arise from our following her frightening journey   Here our main character is such a repugnant sociopath it's impossible to view his fate with anything other than detachment. 

As for the final revelations a). It was obvious from almost the get-go that
Spoiler alert
he was some kind of brian-washed pawn or cult member being manipulated into carrying out the ultimate sacrifice
[close]
b).  No really?   We're supposed to be surprised that
Spoiler alert
Gothy McWitchy and Sinister Crime Boss
[close]
are actually
Spoiler alert
Satanists
[close]
Really?   

Like Monsters I think this is another case of a low budget film from a new British director being hyped to the heavens by British critics eager for a plucky underdog to champion.   


Funcrusher

Quote from: Feralkid on September 18, 2011, 12:41:25 AM


Like Monsters I think this is another case of a low budget film from a new British director being hyped to the heavens by British critics eager for a plucky underdog to champion.

As I said above, I'm always suspicious of this effect, and almost didn't bother seeing this, but I'm glad that I did. I can't say I found it pretentious. Why not use jump cuts? Not everything in the film works, but it's distinctive and unusual which is vanishingly rare in British cinema these days. I thought it used overlapping sound, grainy naturalistic lighting and other directorial techniques quite effectively to build tension and a  sense of unease - I don't remember anything that felt jarring, it all blended pretty well, as did the amalgam of kitchen sink realism, crime and horror.

I'm not sure quite what it adds up to, but the journey was interesting. It seems to be the story of Jay's unstoppable anger destroying his entire world. It also seems again to be showing that the British working classes are a bit obsessed with there being a paedophile around every corner, and that beating up nonces is a legimate way of venting one's own anger. Like Shane Meadows (and I would guess Nick Love, although I've never felt inclined to see any of his films) it's a very male if not macho style of film making. People speak through violence a lot.

BlodwynPig

Nothing to add to FunCrushers succint rebuke - the last showing in Newcastle in 11:10am today and I'm tempted to go for one final fix. It truly was a hypnotic film.

Lord Mandrake

Right, firstly I watched this alone at night loudly through my projector and I had to turn it off at about 3/4 the way through. I looked the rest up on wiki.

It is extremely unsettling and intense, the opening 30 minutes are like eastenders as directed by a psychopath and from there it just gets uglier and drabber and as tense as a calfskin on a well tuned bongo. The soundtrack and edit do unexpected things to your senses, preparing you for shock where there is none thus disorientating you. When violence comes it is too rich for my tastes and as it descended into an inevitable, pure doom I had to put on an episode of speedy gonzalez. I bottled it. Tyres was a bit distracting at first as was Gog as the priest but the performances were uniformly excellant and whilst I cannot doubt it's effectivness I just could'nt enjoy it as cinema because the horror was horrible but worse was the sheer grim, north, bleak, empty, desolation etc...

Lord Mandrake

Right, firstly I watched this alone at night loudly through my projector and I had to turn it off at about 3/4 the way through. I looked the rest up on wiki.

It is extremely unsettling and intense, the opening 30 minutes are like eastenders as directed by a psychopath and from there it just gets uglier and drabber and as tense as a calfskin on a well tuned bongo. The soundtrack and edit do unexpected things to your senses, preparing you for shock where there is none thus disorientating you. When violence comes it is too rich for my tastes and as it descended into an inevitable, pure doom I had to put on an episode of speedy gonzalez. I bottled it. Tyres was a bit distracting at first as was Gog as the priest but the performances were uniformly excellant and whilst I cannot doubt it's effectivness I just could'nt enjoy it as cinema because the horror was horrible but worse was the sheer grim, north, bleak, empty, desolation etc...

Lord Mandrake

Right, firstly I watched this alone at night loudly through my projector and I had to turn it off at about 3/4 the way through. I looked the rest up on wiki.

It is extremely unsettling and intense, the opening 30 minutes are like eastenders as directed by a psychopath and from there it just gets uglier and drabber and as tense as a calfskin on a well tuned bongo. The soundtrack and edit do unexpected things to your senses, preparing you for shock where there is none thus disorientating you. When violence comes it is too rich for my tastes and as it descended into an inevitable, pure doom I had to put on an episode of speedy gonzalez. I bottled it. Tyres was a bit distracting at first as was Gog as the priest but the performances were uniformly excellant and whilst I cannot doubt it's effectivness I just could'nt enjoy it as cinema because the horror was horrible but worse was the sheer grim, north, bleak, empty, desolation etc...

Wet Blanket

QuoteRight, firstly I watched this alone at night loudly through my projector and I had to turn it off at about 3/4 the way through.

You did right, because after the first two thirds the last part is a bag of shite.

I'm all for inscrutable cinema, but unlike something like say, Lost Highway, which clearly follows some sort of internal logic, however obscure, I felt like the ending of kill List was just tacked on, as if the writers, having set up an excellent premise, couldn't be arsed to find any logical way to conclude it. 

BlodwynPig

Bullshit - the ending is fantastic and even darker than the first 3/4. An above average gangster type scenario is cast into Wheatley-ish cultism with verve and madness in equal measure.

if you want all films to follow some linear logic then fair enough, this ain't for you. but if you like dark cinema with hints of "the otherness/otherworldly", then this is bang on.

Unoriginal

I want to watch it because the film poster is a clear rip-off of the poster for Tarkovsky's Stalker and wiki's claim that it's a sort of Cassavetes/Clarke style Wicker Man makes me pretty excited.

Wet Blanket

Quoteif you want all films to follow some linear logic then fair enough, this ain't for you. but if you like dark cinema with hints of "the otherness/otherworldly", then this is bang on.

Nah, the ending was completely arbitrary. I was especially disappointed because I do like dark cinema with hints of the otherwordly, but it's been done with more thought by the likes of Lynch, Buñuel and Franju. Kill List reminded me of undergraduate creative writing projects made deliberately obscure in the pursuit of depth.

BlodwynPig

Arbitrary? What would have been the preferred ending? No cult, no countryside stake out, no claustrophobic chase, no devastating finale - I know, let's just have some tough guy blow the main protagonists brains out after a Sweeney style car chase.

Wet Blanket

I would have kept the cult, but not the bit where
Spoiler alert
they're all of a sudden outside his house, and have somehow kidnapped his wife and kid, disguised them as a hunchback, and made him fight them.
[close]

Was that the plan all along?
Spoiler alert
To make a man fight his wife and kid disguised as a dwarf?
[close]
There are surely easier ways to engineer this

Tiny Poster

I just found it bloody laughable throughout.

Johnny Townmouse

Quote from: BlodwynPig on October 11, 2012, 01:02:07 PM
Arbitrary? What would have been the preferred ending? No cult, no countryside stake out, no claustrophobic chase, no devastating finale - I know, let's just have some tough guy blow the main protagonists brains out after a Sweeney style car chase.

What the fuck are you talking about?

The ending is gash, precisely because it goes for a full-on third act climax, rather than maintaining the depressing, unpleasant tone.

Hangthebuggers

A great film (in regards to tight dialogue, gritty scenes and such) yet it had a weak ending and left many unanswered questions. 

Spoiler alert
Why did their victims 'thank' them?
[close]