Kill List (2011)

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.

Director:

Ben Wheatley

Writers:

Amy Jump, Ben Wheatley

Stars:

Neil Maskell, MyAnna Buring, Harry Simpson

3 wins & 13 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Neil Maskell	...	Jay
MyAnna Buring	...	Shel
Harry Simpson	...	Sam
Michael Smiley	...	Gal
Emma Fryer	...	Fiona
Struan Rodger	...	The Client
Esme Folley	...	Hotel Receptionist
Ben Crompton	...	Justin
Gemma Lise Thornton	...	Keira
Robin Hill	...	Stuart
Zoe Thomas	...	Hotel Waitress
Gareth Tunley	...	The Priest
Jamelle Ola	...	Hotel Receptionist 2
Mark Kempner	...	The Librarian
Damien Thomas	...	The Doctor

Storyline

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.

---

Plot Keywords:

hitman | vomit | ritual sacrifice | forest | cigarette smoking | 

---

Genres:

Crime | Horror | Thriller

---

Certificate:

Not Rated

Details

Official Sites:

Official site

Country:

UK

Language:

English Swedish

Release Date:

2 September 2011 (UK)

Also Known As:

Halállista

Filming Locations:

Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England, UK

Box Office

Budget:

£500,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend:

$9,838 (USA) (3 February 2012)

Gross:

$26,297 (USA) (2 March 2012)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Warp X, Rook Films

Technical Specs

Runtime:

95 min

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Wilhelm Scream: When Gal fires his shotgun at the masked pursuers just after the hanging.

---

Goofs

In the hotel lobby, Jay uses a chip and pin payment for their room. It is obvious that the Visa card being used is put in the wrong way round. The chip is directly below the Visa logo in the top left hand corner of the card which can easily be seen whilst in the card reader.

---

Quotes

Gal: I fucking hate dirty soap.

---

Connections

References The Muppet Show (1976)

---

Soundtracks

"It Could Have Been Better"
Written by Joan Armatrading and Pam Nestor
Published by Onward Music Ltd./Bucks Music Group Ltd.
Courtesy of Tuesday Productions Ltd./Onward Music Ltd.

User Reviews

Our favourite movie of Toronto International Film Festival's Midnight Madness Series

Lodging itself eventually in the creepy-people-doing-creepy-things tradition of religious/occult horror films like The Wicker Man and Rosemary's Baby, director Ben Wheatley's hit-man horror flick Kill List comes on, initially, like a bad-boy bit of British Social realism.

It's rough around the edges, shaggy and idiosyncratically edited, with dialogue so unpolished and authentic-seeming that it's occasionally hard to decipher. It's filled with a handful of legitimately great performances by actors allowed to work improvisationally, seemingly, lending the first half of the film an incredibly charming unpredictability, a low-key volatility that had me bouncing back and forth between moments of disturbing darkness and happy familial pleasantries. Then it gets really crazy.

Jay and Gal are ex-army, estranged friends and partners in crime. Eight months after a disastrous (and mysterious) gig in Kiev, Jay's home life is disintegrating, and after a raucous dinner party with his ex-partner and his creepy new girlfriend he agrees to get back in the saddle and take a job. They're given a list - three targets - and soon they're settling back into a charmingly macabre groove, carousing "salesmen" on the road from town to town and target to target. But after an inadvertent discovery during a routine bit of hit-man work derails their plans, the pair realize they may be part of something much bigger

• and much darker - than a back-room murder-for-hire.

Kill List a stunning piece of very smart genre filmmaking. Wheatley not-so-gently inserts chunks of spooky, disturbing horror into what's already a charmingly dark kitchen sink drama. It's this transition - that either a social realist framework can be twisted into a framework supporting high horror or that a horror film can work filled with improvisational dialogue and broody bits of working-class British anxiety - that makes the film such an immense, jarring pleasure.

Will it work for horror fans used to slick, post-'80s supernatural spookery? Will Ken Loach fans do with a little blood and forest horror? Who knows. For fans of both, it's a stunning - literally - hybrid, something completely unexpected, a real discovery. Kill List is a brilliant idea, brilliantly well executed.