British thriller "Kill List" (2011), with its
"Wicker" ending, is suddenly relevant because of Ukraine
The British horror thriller from 2011 by Ben Wheatley, Kill
List, while genre, may seem suddenly relevant as a lead character Jay (Neil
Maskell) has returned from a disastrous experience as a mercenary in Kiev,
Ukraine. We don't know which side he
fought on, but one could suspect it was Vladimir Putin's cause. He and his partner Gal (Michael Smiley) work
as hit men in present day Britain. That
may seem like an odd occupation. Yet,
the filmmakers won't you to bond with the pair and Jay's wife Shei (Myanna Buring). They don't
seem to be radical Islamists or jihadists or terrorists in the usual
sense. What is going on? Well, they seem to be running out of
money. Shei holds a house party, where
Gal and a mystery woman, Fiona (Emma Fryer), 'the human resources manager' (but
probably working as a contractor herself, helping companies with severance and
layoffs) attends with Gal, who has a new job, actually series of jobs. Fiona (rather like Tovina
in my own screenplay) carves a mystery clue in the bathroom.
The men go on the assignments (rather like jobs from a temp
agency). The first target is 'The
Priest'. That's brutal enough. (The sequence starts at 37 minutes into the
film.) Soon they move on to 'The
Librarian' who has a collection of unspecified evil content. It isn't hard to guess that this is probably
child pornography, and that the priest had been a pedophile. Maybe that sounds a bit homophobic. (The dispatch of 'The Collector' to recall
a 1964 British film is particularly graphic and violent; I also recalled the
1993 British horror film 'Boxing Helena'.)
After some complications with the 'contract', they go on to the third
target, an 'M.P.' Back in the bad old
days of 1962 when I was a patient at NIH, that abbreviation meant 'mental
patient' (not complimentary, and no one believed 'it's nothing to be ashamed
of'). Now it means 'Member of
Parliament'. But this MP is special, in
that he is involved in a human sacrifice cult.
Jay will be drawn into it, stripped and
tested. But the ending, deviating from
previous examples like 'The Wicker Man' (both films) may surprise the viewer.
The viewer might also recall 'Eyes Wide Shut'.
In the extras on the DVD, Wheatley talks about the issue of
having the audience identify with characters who do awful things for a
living.
This film does offer a bit more substance than the typical 'serial killer' thriller. The tag team seems to have been assigned to hit other "real bad guys" that John Walsh would go after.