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Late last night I attended a packed screening of Kill List<\/i> and to say that it fucked me up is to put it tres<\/i>-fucking-mildly. Wheatley\u2019s debut film Down Terrace<\/i> is one of the true sleepers of the last decade, a crime film by turns loose and funny then disturbingly bloody and deeply unsettling, a truly unpredictable cinematic experience that even its detractors have to admire. With Kill List<\/i> Wheatley ups the ante considerably. Though not comedic in the amiable way that much of Down Terrace<\/i> is, it\u2019s often a funny film and more traditionally paced, but its overall effect on the viewer is even more agonizing. There\u2019s no walking away from Kill List<\/i> without feeling like someone made you swallow some rusty nails<\/p>\n
The story concerns itself with Jay, an ex-soldier whose finances are drying up and his wife Shel is giving him shit for it. He\u2019s clearly unstable but he\u2019s decent to his young son, though it\u2019s a shame the boy has to see Jay fight with his mother so viciously. Like Down Terrace<\/i>, much of the first act of the film concerns itself with extremely rocky domesticity, as we watch Jay and Shel argue and drink and host a shaky dinner party with Jay\u2019s best friend Gal and his girlfriend Fiona. At the party Gal tells Jay that he can get them a decent contract from some rich, mysterious fellas, the job being to kill a priest, a librarian and an MP. Jay agrees to the work and we\u2019re off on a disgustingly violent adventure, but not before the mysterious Fiona puts a strange marking on the back of Shel and Jay\u2019s bathroom mirror\u2026<\/p>\n
To say much more than that is risking fucking with the many surprises to be had in Kill List<\/i>, but I will say that the film is just as much a horror film as it is a crime picture. Whether it completely comes together for you in the end is up to how much ambiguity you can stand, but the journey will be far from fucking boring, I guarantee you. The final revelation made someone in the audience I saw it with scream out \u201cOh no!\u201d and there were a couple walk-outs \u2013 and this was in a film festival screening as part of the midnight movie program, where you\u2019d think folks would be ready for a bit of fucked-uppery. Also, there\u2019s a hammer scene that somehow manages to put the elevator scene in Drive<\/i> to shame in terms of nasty head trauma.<\/p>\n
But even with that vague shit I\u2019ve just spilled I feel like I\u2019m getting close to spoiling some of the films grotesque charms, so how\u2019s about we do some listifying instead. Who doesn\u2019t like lists? Fucking nobody, that\u2019s who. (Negatives, consider yourselves doubled.) Here are some of the films that\u2019ve left me feeling the most unsettled after viewing them that I can recall.<\/p>\n
Palindromes<\/i> (2004) Todd Solondz loves making people uncomfortable \u2013 it\u2019s kind of his thing. Storytelling<\/i>, Happiness<\/i> and its sequel Life During Wartime<\/i>, Welcome to the Dollhouse<\/i> \u2013 all films that will leave you queasy and uneasy. But though I think it might be the least successful of his films, Palindromes<\/i> takes the cake for making me feel absolutely sick. The film is mainly remembered for casting numerous actresses in the part of the main character, a young girl navigating her way through a scary world of religious zealots and paedophiles, but what will always stay with me is a particular scene in the film.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a moment near the end where our heroine is in a motel room her much older boyfriend who has just botched the murder of a doctor who performs abortions, killing the man\u2019s child instead. He\u2019s in absolute despair, reeling from what he\u2019s done, and he cries out, \u201cHow many times can I be saved?\u201d It\u2019s a great, sardonic line, but Stephen Adly Guirgis\u2019 performance makes it cut you in half. Never has guilt and anguish, something we noir fans are often attracted to in much of crime fiction, come across so powerfully to me in a film, nor made me feel like I was the one who pulled the trigger.<\/p>\n
Hard Candy<\/i> (2005) I actually fucking hated this film, but because I hated it so much and it made me so fucking angry and upset, I can\u2019t help but begrudgingly admit it that David Slade\u2019s film has some real power to it. It\u2019s the story of a girl (played by a pre-Juno<\/i> Ellen Page) who poses online as an innocent and naive kid to attract a sexual predator played by Patrick Wilson. Once he\u2019s got her home though she reveals that she\u2019s some sort of paedophile murdering vigilante, turning the tables on Wilson and making him suffer for his crimes.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s an extended scene in the movie of an off-screen, not graphic-in-the-slightest castration that had me sweating and checking to make sure my balls were still there the whole time, that\u2019s both a feat of cinematic craft but also, you know, the cheapest way to make a man get light-headed. But what really made this movie linger was how disturbingly quickly I came to hate the Page character and start actually rooting for Wilson\u2019s depraved child-murdering rapist. It\u2019s a disturbing trick Slade pulls off, but I\u2019m not quite sure it was truly his intent with the film. Actually, wait, this may say more about me than the director\u2026<\/p>\n
In My Skin<\/i> (2002) This French film from writer-director-star Marina de Van follows a young, intelligent, successful woman with a dark secret: she is a cutter. Shot in a cold, Kubrickian style, In My Skin<\/i> starts with her using instruments that don\u2019t leave scars on herself, the hero merely fantasizing about taking apart her body. But events devolve until we\u2019re knee-deep in the blood and skin she has lovingly, blissfully separated for herself, her eyes glowing with ecstasy as she licks her wounds and peels them back with her teeth. I\u2019m all for a good torture-porn flick, but rarely does gore actually unnerve me. This thoughtful, austere approach to the gore and madness makes the body-horror linger well past the \u201coh shit!\u201d moments.<\/p>\n
The White Ribbon<\/i> (2009) Speaking of Kubrickian, no list of unsettling films could possibly be complete without Michael Haneke\u2019s name being tossed around some. Some viewers loathe the way Haneke fucks with audience expectations and dispassionately abuses his characters, but I\u2019m almost always sucked in by his films, even though I know he will always punish me for whatever good old-fashioned movie thrills I\u2019m deriving from his ART in capital fucking letters. Funny Games<\/i>, Cache (Hidden)<\/i>, Code Unkown<\/i>, The Piano Teacher<\/i> – I\u2019ve loved and \u201chated\u201d them all, but The White Ribbon<\/i> has lasted with me the longest simply for its stark, quietly horrific tone and mood.<\/p>\n
Set in a quiet German Protestant town in the days before World War I, the film follows many characters in the community as they react to a rash of bizarre, violent occurrences taking place. We never know fully who the perpetrators are (it\u2019s a Haneke movie, after all), but we\u2019re fairly it\u2019s all been done by the children of this town, Haneke possibly making a point about the generation that let Hitler take power. Shot in gorgeous black and white, Haneke manages to make every scene drip with dread and potential for shocking violence, and he does the creepy kid clich\u00e9 better than any traditional horror movie ever. But what really makes The White Ribbon<\/i> stand out from the rest of Haneke\u2019s stomach-churning filmography is that you actually care deeply about many of the characters.<\/p>\n
Audition<\/i> (1999) Takashi Miike has made plenty of films that are extreme or graphic, but not a lot of them that are truly disturbing. Audition<\/i>, with its strangely light and lively first half and truly fucked up home stretch, never lets you feel safe. We follow a widower who uses his film industry contacts to set up an audition for a date, the girls thinking it\u2019s for a big role but the widower just looking for the right woman. But it soon turns out the perfect girl for the part may have some secrets of her own. Miike has put scenes on film far more disgusting than the one in the third act, but few as powerful in their depiction of torture. By teasing it for over and hour only to hit us squarely in the balls for a half hour, he created his most effective and consistent film, and also (say it with me!) his most unsettling.<\/p>\n
But what movies have stayed with you, left you feeling like you hung your head over the railing and stared down at the bottom a thousand feet below for too long? Okay, other<\/i> than Jack and Jill<\/i>, wiseass.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Late last night I attended a packed screening of Kill List and to say that it fucked me up is to put it tres-fucking-mildly. Wheatley\u2019s debut film Down Terrace is one of the true sleepers of the last decade, a crime film by turns loose and funny then disturbingly bloody and deeply unsettling, a truly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal-takes","category-watchlist-hub"],"yoast_head":"\n