Film reviews
It’s very much a movie of two halves, with Farrell dominating the first half, artfully playing up to the cheesiness inherent in remaking a cult horror with a collection of physical tics that manage to be simultaneously subtle and over-the-top. It’s a fine line to walk, but Farrell copes admirably, investing the character with comic touches and a genuinely unsettling presence. The set-up is good too, particularly the setting: given the nature of its transient population, Las Vegas is a practical haunt for a vampire who preys on loners, even if its bland suburbia and neon-lit city streets are the antithesis of the conventionally gothic tropes of the vampire flick. Unfortunately, the story has Jerry uncovered as a blood-sucker less than half the way through, at which point the burden of carrying the tale falls onto the shoulders of Anton Yelchin. Pale, fey and stumbling around in something of a stupor, Yelchin has all the characteristics of a vampire’s victim from the very beginning, and things don’t improve when he’s called upon to drive the narrative on. With Farrell’s nuanced performance largely lost behind increasingly lurid use of CGI, and David Tennant attempting a third-rate Russell Brand impersonation as a jaded vampire expert, the story becomes a stilted exercise in pastiche, and one that lacks laughs, scares and, ultimately, any real point. Given that the director, Craig Gillespie, made his debut with the superb black comedy Lars and the Real Girl (2007), this is a woeful disappointment, and only Farrell emerges with his CV enhanced.
Kill List (18s) represents a very different kind of horror, and one that is at times genuinely frightening. Jay (Neil Maskell) is an ex-British soldier finding it difficult to adjust to civilian life. Hard-pressed for money, and craving excitement, he takes up his old comrade Gal’s (Michael Smiley) offer of freelance contract killing. Once the pair embark on their mission, however, Jay quickly proves himself unstable, and events begin to spiral out of control. Director Ben Wheatley co-wrote the script with Amy Jump, which is set in contemporary Britain, and the horror is derived from the contrast between the outbursts of savage violence and the authentically rendered scenes of domestic life, as Jay and his wife Shel (MyAnna Buring) whiplash through an emotional rollercoaster, their ups and downs punctuated by verbal and physical aggression and convincingly tender reconciliations. There’s horror, too, in the targets Jay and Gal execute, as the pair come to realise why the men (one of whom is a priest) are being killed. The film benefits hugely from three excellent performances from Maskell, Buring and Smiley, but where it really scores is when Jay’s post-traumatic stress disorder finally runs riot, and the taut action thriller mutates into a weird, paranoid and possibly hallucinogenic finale not unlike the ending of original Wicker Man (1973). It won’t be to everyone’s taste, but Kill List is a bravura piece of filmmaking that is pleasingly unconventional in almost every regard.
