Kill List

You know that game where one of you starts a story then take it in turns to complete it without knowing what had already been written on the paper? Well Kill List appears to have been scripted with that method,  the first hour and a half  was incredible but then the last 10 minutes totally leftfield and completely different.

Throughout the beginning of this film I was thinking what a directorial masterpiece.  The pace was slow but steady and intriguing; it was like reading a really good book, capturing your attention and sparking your imagination. Nothing you expected to happen happened, it came across as a really predictable film but wasn’t, you thought you knew for sure what was happening next and it was subsequently different.

It juxtaposed graphic violence that was gritty and real - think Paddy Considene and Shane Meadows - with fights scenes akin to Bridget Jones.  It was spectacularly done, with some pure comedic one liners, actual laugh out loud lines contrasting with covering your eyes/ears scenes of anticipation of the unimaginable.

Most people speak today of audiences being desensitized and that nothing shocks anyone anymore but this should have a rating all of its own.  It was almost a homage to QT with the black screens with white text and graphic violence but arguably million times better than QT and his Hollywood budgets.

I have never sat in a cinema where there was complete silence, no one moving, whispering, eating, drinking or, it seemed, even breathing.  Looking around everyone had their hands nervously near their faces.  It wasn’t so much that anything happened that was jumpy or particularly that horrific when thinking along the lines of commercial horrors (Saw, Hostel etc), but the build up with the emotionally evoking score that was masterfully composed to combine the right amount of pensive tension with fear.  At one point people actually were covering their ears rather than their eyes as the sounds were so creepy.

Have no idea why it changed at the end, it was truly bizarre, I will not spoil it but there is no way to guess unless you have read any real reviews.  I went into this film knowing that it was a British film and that the title sounded good, thinking to myself that I hadn’t seen an 18 that seemed that more disturbing than a 15 nowadays, however this needed its own rating.

With a virtually unknown cast and only the second outing for the director and a minimal budget of only £500,000; it shouldn’t  be put solely in the genre of “horror” and all the negative commercial ideas that generates, for it is more than just a horror,  it wouldn’t give you nightmares as you know you could never be in that situation, or if you are you have most definitely chosen to be, but it does provoke horrific thoughts whilst watching the film, as everyone knows the imagination is the scariest thing…