Kill List (2011)
Directed by Ben Wheatley
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.
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21 films that influenced Kill List
What critics say influenced Kill List
Wheatley has also been greatly influenced by Robin Hardy’s 1973 cult classic “The Wicker Man” and its recent sequel, “The Wicker Tree,” involving paganism and chanting, along with nightmarish, quasi-religious rituals evoking twisted memories of William Friedkin’s “Rosemary’s Baby” and Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” and “Eyes Wide Shut.”
At some point, we exit the realm of "bad guys doing crime" and enter zones of fantasy and the occult, and the film begins to operate in narrative jungles previously deforested by the likes of Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut , The Shining , Robin Hardy's The Wicker Man...and Edgar Wright's Hot Fuzz ?
Neil Maskell as Jay reminds me a little of Matt Malloy in " In the Company of Men ," and in Michael Smiley as Gal, there are aspects of Peter Stormare .
Wheatley has also been greatly influenced by Robin Hardy’s 1973 cult classic “The Wicker Man” and its recent sequel, “The Wicker Tree,” involving paganism and chanting, along with nightmarish, quasi-religious rituals evoking twisted memories of William Friedkin’s “Rosemary’s Baby” and Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” and “Eyes Wide Shut.”
There is no logical solution to the events in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (a radical difference from Stephen King’s novel, which did lay out a concise but much less satisfying answer).
At some point, we exit the realm of "bad guys doing crime" and enter zones of fantasy and the occult, and the film begins to operate in narrative jungles previously deforested by the likes of Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut , The Shining , Robin Hardy's The Wicker Man...and Edgar Wright's Hot Fuzz ?
Confounding expectations the same way he did with Down Terrace, Wheatley's tale of the unpredictable owes as much to The Parallax View as it does to Race with the Devil.
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In its tatty way, the film aims for the apocalyptic dread engendered by ’70s shockers like “Don’t Look Now’’ - a sense that the known universe is buckling under the stress of an evil beyond imagining.
It's as if some monstrous fusion of The Wicker Man, The Blair Witch Project, Eyes Wide Shut, and The Dark Secret of Harvest Home burst forth onto the world . . .
Wheatley has also been greatly influenced by Robin Hardy’s 1973 cult classic “The Wicker Man” and its recent sequel, “The Wicker Tree,” involving paganism and chanting, along with nightmarish, quasi-religious rituals evoking twisted memories of William Friedkin’s “Rosemary’s Baby” and Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” and “Eyes Wide Shut.”
At some point, we exit the realm of "bad guys doing crime" and enter zones of fantasy and the occult, and the film begins to operate in narrative jungles previously deforested by the likes of Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut , The Shining , Robin Hardy's The Wicker Man...and Edgar Wright's Hot Fuzz ?
The film’s first two thirds owe a huge debt to Shane Meadows‘ revenge pic Dead Man’s Shoes, for both its agonizing tone and the grotty look.The final part of the film is not entirely dissimilar to The Wicker Man (only far less camp) as a strange mask-wearing occult becomes a very large part of the plot.
The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby, The Blair Witch Project, Halloween, Night of the Living Dead all provided intimations of what might be happening but left the bulk of it for you to decide.
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Wheatley's taken ideas from such films as "The Wicker Man" and "Rosemary's Baby" and wrapped them into his own aesthetic.
Wheatley has also been greatly influenced by Robin Hardy’s 1973 cult classic “The Wicker Man” and its recent sequel, “The Wicker Tree,” involving paganism and chanting, along with nightmarish, quasi-religious rituals evoking twisted memories of William Friedkin’s “Rosemary’s Baby” and Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” and “Eyes Wide Shut.”
The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby, The Blair Witch Project, Halloween, Night of the Living Dead all provided intimations of what might be happening but left the bulk of it for you to decide.
Easily his equal is MyAnna Buning (The Descent) as a beautiful yet conniving wife, and the effortlessly watchable Michael Smiley (also seen in Down Terrace) steals scene after scene with a combination of low-key heart and subtle menace.