Typical: you wait for a Pinter-esque, character-driven, genre-crunching horror movie and two come at once. Screening in the tiny Discovery Screen, Sean Hogan's The Devil's Business could have easily weathered an upgrade to the main room, where it would have been interesting to see how patient the Frightfest lot really are when it comes to films that build tension through storytelling and imagination. A super-low-budget production – when the producer (Jennifer Handorf) reveals that the location was actually her in-laws' house, you know you're not in Hollywood any more – Hogan's film is a terrific example of what can be done with very little money and a lot of genre smarts.
The story starts with two hitmen, Pinner (Billy Clarke) and Cully (Jack Gordon), in the home of a man they've been despatched to kill by crime boss Bruno (Harry Miller). While they're waiting, the two begin to talk. “I bet you've got some stories,” says Cully, and Pinner does – in a nicely written sequence, he relates Bruno's obsession with a dancer – an affair that ended violently, with a creepy, supernatural twist. Exploring the house, they find evidence of devil worship – it is, after all, quite difficult to miss – and when their target, the urbane Kist (Jonathan Hansler), arrives home from the opera, the two hitmen discover that this is not going to be an ordinary job.
With a running time of 75 minutes, The Devil's Business is aware of its limits and keeps a level of mystery and intrigue throughout. The performances are incredibly strong for this kind of genre piece; Clarke and Gordon spark as the chalk-and-cheese duo – Pinner is the jaded old hand, Clarke the naïve jack-the-lad new boy – and Hansler takes things up a notch with a part that's best left to be discovered, a decadent, Dorian Grey-like character whom he plays like a shady Colin Firth. There are a few sags; some scenes last a little too long and a major plot device is explained with a clumsy, throwaway line of exposition. But the film has a fullness to it, and it punches well above its weight.
And so to Ben Wheatley's Kill List (pictured above), inarguably the year's most talked-about genre offering. Like The Devil's Business, this is a film that was designed to suit its constraints, following Wheatley's little-seen debut, Down Terrace, with a much more aggressive use of its elements. For a start, there's that title. From Down Terrace you might not gather that this was a gangster movie, albeit a gangster movie with a twist, in that it's about the mundane, suburban life of a Brighton crime family. But with Kill List there is no such subtlety: there is a kill list and the people on it do die. Horribly.
There are several elements that conspire to make Kill List one of the most fascinating movies of the year. Firstly, there's its realism. Neil Maskell stars as Jay, an Afghanistan war veteran who's living in suburbia with his wife Shel (MyAnna Buring) and their young son. Jay is unemployed and facing bankruptcy, and after a hideous dinner party with his friend Gal (Michael Smiley) and his new girlfriend, he accepts the offer of the proverbial one last job, teaming up with Gal to carry out a series of contract killings for a mysterious client (Soho landmark Struan Rodger). This could could all come from a Ken Loach movie, since the film's style owes more to British kitchen-sink drama than horror. But then the fantasy element comes into play, slyly and slowly at first, but building to a mad crescendo in the final reel.
Enough of plot spoilers. The third and most successful element of Kill List is perhaps its wonderful sense of gallows humour. Jay's face-off with a bunch of Christians in a hotel restaurant is both hilarious and, in retrospect, actually quite chilling, and Maskell and Smiley create a dorky chemistry together that keeps us perversely charmed even when, in a self-righteous rage, Jay ill-advisedly goes “off-list”. Finally, though, I think what seals the deal is the film's perfect sense of mystery. Some love the ending, others hate it, but what's quite telling is that few people seem to hate the whole thing. Personally, I love the ambition of an ending that doesn't just jump the rails – it jumps a whole dimension.
It'll be interesting to see how Kill List fares at the box office; my fear is that it may be too heavy for mainstream audiences, who'll need a few years to catch up with its intelligent subtext about the modern world and its skewed morality. Likewise, The Devil's Business might be considered too small for a theatrical release, which would be a shame, since it, too, has substance and style. In an ideal world, these two films would play back to back, the way movies like Skyjacked and Juggernaut did in the 70s. I can see the poster now. Ah, those really were the days...
* Read an interview with Kill List director Ben Wheatley here…
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