IMDb plot summary: Nearly a year after a botched job, a hitman takes a new assignment with the promise of a big payoff for three killings. What starts off as an easy task soon unravels, sending the killer into the heart of darkness.
Directed by Ben Wheatley. Starring Neil Maskell, MyAnna Buring, Harry Simpson, and Michael Smiley.
This is a film that plays on creepy atmosphere more than anything -- it reminds me a bit of Denis Villeneuve's Enemy, which I watched recently and found frustrating in its being ALMOST a straightforward narrative and then, abruptly, very much not. The creepy atmosphere here does have some effective moments. There's one brief scene involving the use of a drumbeat that completely paralyzed me fear, which was the first movie this month to do that and was kind of a delicious cathartic moment. But I think the movie is relying on more moments like that, of its ending images evoking pure terror to the point where I am affected rather than distracted by trying to figure out what's actually happening at this point in the story. Kill List made a lot of my friends' best-of-2011 lists, so I had high hopes for it going in, but aside from one very effective moment, it left me cold.
How it entered my Flickchart:
Kill List < The Firemen's Ball
Kill List > The Heartbreak Kid (2007)
Kill List < Four Weddings and a Funeral
Kill List < Biloxi Blues
Kill List > Where to Invade Next
Kill List > The Day of the Triffids
Kill List < The Pajama Game
Kill List > Martian Child
Kill List > Last of the Red Hot Lovers
Kill List > Ocean's Twelve
Kill List > Scotland, PA
Kill List > Lust for Love
Final spot: #2249 out of 3234, or 30%.
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