Review of Kill List (2011) by Shane J — 17 May 2013

A movie in search of a genre, Kill List isn't so much a bad movie as it is a disappointing movie that tries too hard to be good at everything. It begins as a drama, then morphs into a suspense thriller (with a hefty amount of grotesque violence), and then finally it becomes a horror movie, and only the middle section works.

You shouldn't know much about the specifics of the plot before watching, but it's basically about a married man and former soldier named Jay who, along with his friend Gal, starts working as a hit-man.

However, Jay gradually becomes more paranoid and violent as the contracts continue, and he soon discovers that all is not as it seems. At least half of the movie plays out as a hit-man thriller, which is by far the most interesting part of the movie.

Director Ben Wheatley pulls no punches in terms of violence and almost all of the brutality occurs in plain sight onscreen. It gets pretty hard to watch at times, but this section of the movie nonetheless makes for a surprisingly exciting thriller.

In the last twenty minutes though, all of this is just thrown out the window in favor of a contrived horror plot twist, and it feels entirely out of place. To top it all off, the plot is ultimately left open to interpretation yet the ending leaves the viewer with nothing to work with in trying to understand it.

I don't need to be spoonfed all of the plot details to like a movie, but Kill List doesn't even try to have a coherent story to analyze. It feels completely disjointed because of its sudden shifts in genre and tone, and the horror ending borrows a little too heavily from a few other movies that I won't name.

Kill List is half a good movie, and it deserves credit for that, but the pieces just don't ultimately come together to make this movie something truly great.