Kill List
Kill List is a 2011 British psychological horror crime film directed by Ben Wheatley, co-written and co-edited with Amy Jump, and starring Neil Maskell, MyAnna Buring and Michael Smiley.Shel organizes a dinner party to which she invites Gal and his latest girlfriend, Fiona, a human resources manager.Meanwhile, Fiona goes to the toilet, carves a symbol on the back of the bathroom mirror, and takes a tissue that Jay had used to mop up his blood after a shaving accident.The second name on the list, "The Librarian", is an archivist who keeps a collection of horrific, sickening videos of an undisclosed nature.Confronting the archivist at his home, an enraged Jay beats him senseless and tortures him into identifying the names of the people who created the videos.Gal informs Jay that, while raiding the safe in the home of the second target, he took enough money to cover the total sum they would receive for the contract.After a brutal knife fight, Jay triumphs, only to discover that the Hunchback was his wife with Sam strapped to her back.[9] The film's story came partially from casting ideas, and Wheatley specifically wrote the part of Jay for Neil Maskell, with whom he'd worked previously on a TV series.Wheatley always had a plan for the ending and made sure the story was logically consistent, though he states that there are multiple possible interpretations and the cult itself remains scarier when its motives and background are shrouded in mystery."[18] Peter Bradshaw reviewed the film for The Guardian and compared it to The Wicker Man and The Blair Witch Project, but he also said that Kill List "often looks like a film by Lynne Ramsay or even Lucrecia Martel, composed in a dreamily unhurried arthouse-realist style that is concerned to capture texture, mood and moment", concluding that "[a]s far as British horror goes right now, Kill List is pretty much top of the range".[21] Philip French of The Observer called the film an "edgy, mysterious thriller that begins in one generic mode and jumps, or modulates, into another".John DeFore of The Hollywood Reporter called it a "deeply edgy, gory crime film [that] maintains perfectly calibrated tension before dropping a bombshell that will be too much for some viewers".[26] David Harley of Bloody Disgusting rated it 4/5 stars and called it "an atmospheric delight, boasting incredibly intense performances by Maskell and Smiley, and a doozy of an ending that will unhinge even the most hardened of genre fans".