Kill List (2011)

John Chard November 2, 2015

★ 8/10

Sometimes God's love can be hard to swallow. A super slice of sub-urban horror crafted by Ben Wheatley, Kill List blends a number of classic British films but still remains very much its own beast. And what a beast it is. Part hit-man thriller and part Wicker Man pagan horror, plot spins hit-man for hire Jay (Neil Maskell) out of his troubled domestic funk, into a world of pain and misery. Taking on a job, he, along with his partner Gal (Michael Smiley), is given a list of names for them to track and terminate. The people and the places they confront are the darkest kind, which brings out Jay's black heart as well. All this while lurking around the edges of the frame is something mysterious, something that will bring Jay to his destiny. There is a rawness to Kill List that strikes hard, a sort of real life documentary feel that marries up with the black material to chill the bones.…

tmdb15435519 April 26, 2021

★ 8/10

A bit tough to understand on the first watch, yet gripping and a compelling portrayal of inner demons. But seriously, are the British the only film-makers who can make a decent crime/thriller film??

r96sk September 11, 2024

★ 3/10

Rubbi... Wait, people love this? Before I started my review, I decided to take a quick look at the Letterboxd reviews. I always play a minigame in my head by attempting to guess the average rating, for example for the last film I watched - 'Jack the Giant Slayer' - I called it spot on at 2.4. This I genuinely predicted less than 2.0... it's at 3.5! To tell you I was flabbergasted would be an understatement. There have been films in the past when my thoughts are the opposite (both positively and negatively) to the majority elsewhere, but I think this one takes the crown as the most polarizing so far. I just didn't like this 2011 release at all, there's one good piece of violence involving a hammer and a head (not like that, ichthyologists) but otherwise I found it all super underwhelming. I hadn't heard of 'Kill List' prior to watching it, I only decided to do so as I noticed it …

FolknHell August 25, 2026

★ 8/10

*Kill List*’s cleverest trick is not that it turns into a folk-horror film. It is that, by the time the masks and torches arrive, it has quietly made the case that Jay has been inside one all along. For much of the film Ben Wheatley shoots his world like grubby domestic reportage: handheld cameras, naturalistic light, awkward rooms, rows about money, men trying to recover some idea of usefulness through work they are spectacularly ill-suited to describe at parents’ evening. Jay and Gal are contract killers, but the film initially treats that almost as another miserable freelance occupation. The violence is not. When it comes, Wheatley refuses the comforting cutaway, and Jay’s fury starts to look less like professional brutality than something being deliberately fed. That is where the odd details begin to matter. A priest thanks Jay before dying. The librarian appears to recog…