Genre kicks in the current cinema

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• bill says:

  February 1, 2012 at 7:36 pm

  I saw KILL LIST a few weeks ago. It’s really some­thing, I think. I’m con­flic­ted, though, because there’s a plot bit towards the end that seemed off to me, though watch­ing it on VOD at home does allow for the pos­sib­il­ity that the con­nec­tion was lost to me because, I don’t know, maybe one of my cats was try­ing to fight a shad­ow or something.
  But hoo-ee, that end­ing. Really chilling and dis­turb­ing and weird and awful. The use of occa­sion­al title cards through­out the film, announ­cing the next vic­tim on the “kill list” in the simplest terms (“THE PRIEST” and so on) sets up the end­ing in such a clean and stark way that the final title card made me think “Oh fuck­ing hell, what does THAT mean!?” As with the ori­gin­al WICKER MAN, the end­ing is so thor­oughly effect­ive that whatever quibbles I might have had up to that point were com­pletely over­whelmed. I want to say one or two more things, but I very much do not want to spoil it, even slightly, for anyone.

• Brandon says:

  February 1, 2012 at 7:45 pm

  Yeah, I was utterly bored by the first hour of KILL LIST and then pro­ceeded to say it may have the best/most sur­pris­ing end­ing of the year. I haven’t had the chance to see it again to pick up on any­thing I may have missed…

• warren oates says:

  February 2, 2012 at 3:20 am

  It’s not just WICKER MAN in that end­ing but RACE WITH THE DEVIL too (I should know!). And count me in as anoth­er fan of KILL LIST. A big and pleas­ant sur­prise. There’s an aura of dread that hangs over the whole pic­ture. I can­’t relate to Brandon’s being bored. There’s enough odd stuff going on from the get-go that I could­n’t relax and was always eager to know what might hap­pen next. The whole thing felt lean and tense and night­mar­ish to me. An excit­ing genre mash-up, a great thrill­er, a moody exer­cise in low-budget style and a very prom­ising second feature.

• rotch says:

  February 2, 2012 at 11:29 am

  Another fan of Kill List here. Just wanted to point out a minor irk. The movie shares many plot points with Srdjan Spasojevic’s dread­ful A Serbian Film, includ­ing the final twist. You can actu­ally write a syn­op­sis for both and just sub­sti­tute “killer” for “porn star” and “kill” with “have sex”, and the res­ult would suit each film. And while I find the former to be a mod­ern genre clas­sic while the lat­ter ham fis­ted trash, I just could­n’t shake the feel­ing that I had seen this before.
  On an unre­lated note, I caught a screen­ing of Chronicle yes­ter­day and it was ok, but if there ever was a movie that could do without the whole “found foot­age” gim­mick is this one. I stayed for a chat with the dir­ect­or after­wards and it sure seems that the whole reas­on for doing it is just for the visu­al effects to look cool­er. Which I guess they do. But I had a hard time get­ting past the whole “who is record­ing this?” or “who turned that cam­era on?” thoughts. It sure was fun though.

• Brandon says:

  February 2, 2012 at 3:53 pm

  I guess I was try­ing to say how unbored I became as a res­ult of being ini­tially bored, if that makes any sense. Maybe I just was­n’t pay­ing close enough atten­tion (I knew abso­lutely noth­ing about the film ahead of time aside from the title and coun­try of ori­gin). I watched the rela­tion­ship type drama with some interest, know­ing the whole back-of-the-mirror thing had to come back in again some­how, but when the film shif­ted to a kind of far­cic­al occu­pa­tion­al doc­u­ment­ary I was thrown enough to think that it did­n’t really know what it was try­ing to do or be. The end­ing made me ques­tion that I had missed some­thing major, because it was yet anoth­er com­pletely dif­fer­ent dir­ec­tion (but so well executed).
  It has been a few weeks since I have seen it and I can­’t really put all the pieces togeth­er again now (if it was even pos­sible anyway).

• Don R. Lewis says:

  February 3, 2012 at 10:20 pm

  Great review, Glenn and I too am a huuuge fan of KILL LIST. It’s so good I almost think it’s a bull­shit movie that’s near pure view­er exploit­a­tion and games to lead you to the end. But you nailed that in the review as well. I’d watch it again right now if I had it in fact as I think it’s a movie that might always reveal a new angle.

• Frank McDevitt says:

  February 4, 2012 at 9:14 am

  An idi­ot friend acci­dent­ally spoiled the end­ing of Kill List for me. Is it still worth see­ing even though the (incred­ible sound­ing) end­ing will be much less of a gut punch?

• Mr. Ziffel says:

  February 5, 2012 at 1:28 pm

  Holy shit…I just looked up HORROR HIGH on IMDB and real­ized that I saw that movie as an impres­sion­able preteen over thirty-five years ago on Scream Theater (a Detroit area late-night tele­vi­sion hor­ror movie show­case), but it was titled TWISTED BRAIN. Ridiculously bad, but of course I loved it and checked every week for a repeat.
  Looking for­ward to KILL LIST after read­ing your rel­at­ively spoiler-free review.

• Joegross says:

  February 6, 2012 at 4:58 pm

  CHRONICLE is the only movie involving super­powers (in the tights and fights sense, rather than, I dunno, Eternal Sunshine or some­thing) I have ever really liked. High fives, everyone.