Program Note
Jay and Shel are a married couple with a strained relationship. One day, a fight erupts between the couple during a dinner party, and Jay decides to follow his friend Gal’s advice, to throw himself into his work. The problem is, Jay is a professional hit man, and his new gig, the completion of his so-called “Kill List”, only exacerbates the stress hee’s experiencing at home. Complications arise with the execution of the kill list, and the resulting stress drives Jay to become even more violent and brutal in his job. Kill List, directed by Ben Wheatley offers a modern reinterpretation of the folk horror genre. The film’s unconventional form serves to keep the audience on the edge of their seats and guessing about the plot’s outcome until the very end. This tension is the force which drives the plot of the film whose greatest charm is its ingenuous skewering of other films of the genre. (Jin PARK)