Ben Wheatley is an absolutely fascinating director. His films have a weird kind of fluidity, like they can have any time or any genre and still feel like a Ben Wheatley film. I'm a huge fan of this guy because of this, and also because he kind of just gets film and how it works. Kill List is a really interesting movie, too. If you haven't seen it, watch it before you read this, but be warned, it's an incredibly disturbing film. I'd like to explore why that is, but I can't really do that without spoiling it, so definitely check it out and then come back here. Kill List is easily one of the best horror films of the decade, but doesn't really become one until the last 20 or so minutes. It's absolutely terrifying and deeply disturbing, but why? Is it the imagery? The ideas? The content?
Horror is such a great genre because the stuff that makes it scary always comes from somewhere. Something like The Babadook is scary purely because of the ideas it tackles (grief can force us into uncomfortable and unhealthy mindsets that can damage the ones we love), while something like The Thing is scary because of the imagery on show (which itself comes from the a fear of the mutilation of the human body). Good horror can provide an immediate shock, but great horror can burrow deep under the skin to provide something altogether more sinister
Kill List is an almost deceptively simple film. Two hitmen have a list of people to kill. They kill them. But from the start, it's obvious that things aren't okay. One of the men has a fairly tense relationship with his wife, something that immediately makes the audience uncomfortable. As their job progresses, the two have violent encounters that, while not necessarily scary, deepen the already incredibly unsettling atmosphere. When they encounter a cult near the end, the film really becomes a horror movie, leading to an ending that's so pitch black and deeply disturbing.
Obviously the ending is terrifying, and the film is very clearly a horror film. But where does the fear come from? The whole film has an atmosphere of dread, but it only becomes a full blown horror in the home stretch. So why is the whole thing so scary? How does this combination of domestic drama, hitman thriller and cult horror manage to blend these things so seamlessly and create such a nerve shredding experience? We know it's a scary film, but why? I think, for me, a large part of it is the progression of the dread. The film opens by showing us the strained relationship between the hitman and his wife, which builds into this unbearable sequence where they have the other hitman and his girlfriend over for dinner. This is incredibly hard to watch, and it starts the film on an immediately uncomfortable note. This should be the domestic portion of the film, the calm before the storm, but by dropping us into an already tense situation, but Ben Wheatley doesn't give us that. He puts us into something that's uncomfortable but familiar, and while this isn't something unique to this film, given the pitch black insanity that awaits the audience, it provides some interesting dissonance. We're uncomfortable at the beginning, but it comes from a place that we inherently understand. Even if we haven't experienced this kind of situation, we know that this is something that happens. It's not pleasant, in fact the whole purpose of it here is to make us uneasy, but it's not unusual. This is the starting point of a film that goes from familiar discomfort to a completely alien kind of deeply disturbing horror
Of course, we have to get there, and this is where the progression of dread comes in. Wheatley portrays the job itself as its own kind of horror. These men are hardly new to violence, but Wheatley takes the stark reality of bloodshed and uses it to once again unsettle the audience rather than scare them. It's not as familiar as the film's opening portion, but it shows us the harsh reality of being an assassin. As the second act goes on, however, it begins to become more and more disturbing, not just for the audience, but for the characters too. They find themselves in a position much deeper and more disturbing than they intended when they took the job. They encounter some horrifying things, and begin to realise something isn't right. This is brilliant horror storytelling, because although the film isn't a full blown frightfest yet, you're encountering and realising these things alongside them, and when they sense of dread is at its absolute height, that's when Wheatley drops you into the real horror
There's no gradual reveal here. There are details all throughout the film that suggest what's going on, but there's no scene where they figure out what's really happening, and it's never something that the characters 100% understand. They try to leave of course, but they never realise the truth before it happens. It's the plot point equivalent of a jump scare, where something horrifying is spring upon the audience, but instead of being an image, it's a story beat. From here, it's pure horror. The tunnel scene, the brutal slaying of one hitman, the home invasion and the final ritual. The cult never explain their motives or their beliefs, because that stuff doesn't matter. The gradual buildup of dread suddenly blossoms into pure, grizzly horror, where the surviving hitman kills a mysterious figure who turns out to be his wife and son. As imagery goes, this is as bleak and horrifying as it gets, and because it's so sudden and so unfamiliar, it's so scary. Kill List is one of the most disturbing films I've ever seen, and it's a great horror film precisely because, for most of its run, it's not actually a horror film. The slow progression of dread makes the film more uncomfortable but less familiar, until the film ends on a scene that's so unfathomably scary, one that Wheatley never stops to explain, and doesn't need to, because it's awful enough on its own. Kill List is such an unpleasant watch, and I don't know if I could watch it again, but it's a masterfully crafted horror experience. It's scary because it's a slow descent from deep discomfort to unimaginable, almost unexplainable audacity. Why is it so scary? Because it's a carefully tailored descent into a hell so bleak that it can't fully be articulated
"They are bad people. They should suffer"
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