SPOILER WARNING: It’s advisable to watch Kill List before reading this article. Once you’ve seen Kill List, you’ll probably want to read this article to figure out what the hell it is you’ve just watched.

One fact that amused me - Ben Wheatley directed ads for Innocent Smoothies while developing Kill List. Quirky fruit drinks are about as far as you can get from a kitchen sink drama about contract killing and weird death cults.

The critics have been very kind to Kill List with lots of five star reviews across the board – but public reaction to the film is more polarised. Some love it, some hate it, with very little in between. I didn’t realise this when I bought the Blu Ray.

I absolutely hated Kill List the first time I watched it. In fact I shook my head in disgust and almost threw the disc across the room.

It was only after discussing the film on twitter and internet messageboards that I realised that there’s more to it than meets the eye. Watching it for a second time, I enjoyed it a lot more (perhaps enjoy is the wrong word – appreciate?).

It’s not a perfect film – there are a few lingering questions and threads that aren’t tied up by the end – but there’s a hell of a lot to admire about it, once you unpick it and figure out what it’s really about.

In fact, I’d go as far as to say that Kill List is a kitchen sink/gangster/horror Mulholland Drive, drawing on Get Carter, Mike Leigh’s films, and of course The Wicker Man as well as more obscure Brit horrors of the 70s.

Now, let’s start digging.

++ even MORE spoilers ++

OK, what happened in the film? I was with it for the first hour, then it all went totally mad at the end. WTF? If all those shots of the moon behind some clouds and the music didn’t clue you in – it’s a horror movie.

Jay and Gal are both ex-soldiers who’ve served in Iraq. Since leaving the army they’ve set up a business together. That business appears to be the business of killing people. Jay’s wife Shel sets up their contracts with their employers. Their last job together was in Kiev, and appears to have either been a gruelling experience that might not have gone to plan. We never really know what happened in Kiev, but perhaps Gal’s throwaway line ‘At least we’re not killing a toddler’ hints at what might have happened.

Their assassinations are being carried out not for a group of criminal masterminds, but for a cult that worships death and sacrifice. Unbeknownst to them, these assassinations are actually part of a ceremony to turn Jay into the new Antichrist. The whole film as mentioned by the cult leader is ‘a reconstruction’. Jay is the subject of their reconstruction.

They see the pure evil that's inside him. He’s become someone who is unfeeling and psychotic. After Fiona sees his behaviour at the dinner party, he is officially ‘marked’ by her when she carves the cult’s symbol on the back of his mirror. 

Did you notice the bloody tissues on the sink? Possibly from her ritually sacrificing the rabbit in the garden, which Jay later eats for breakfast, thinking it’s an offering from the cat. Instead, he is unwittingly accepting the sacrifice and the first stage of his reconstruction.

The way his victims smile and thank him when he is killing them is because they know who he really is. They’re even happily surprised to see him, as though they know who he is and are happy to play some small part in his reconstruction. To be killed by him is an honour to cult members.

The three victims – the Priest, the Librarian and the MP – are obvious figures of authority, each with a stereotypical dark side. The Priest is seen smoking outside the back entrance. The Librarian has a stash of hardcore porn that is so horrific that it sends Jay on a mission of revenge to kill the people who made it. The MP is the third person on the list and the one with, perhaps, the darkest secret of all.

As they close in on the MP’s house, Jay and Gal happen upon a midnight procession of naked, torch wielding people. As they sacrifice a girl by hanging, Jay opens fire on them in a rage. They are chased into sewers, where Gal is fatally stabbed by a cultist. He begs Jay to kill him. Just before he dies, he says ‘thank you’ in an ironic echo of the previous victims. 

Jay flees to his family cottage where Shel and his son are hiding. They are followed by the cult, who set up a torchlit ceremony outside. Shel is captured.

Jay is forced to fight the final victim on the Kill List – ‘The Hunchback’. As he stabs the hunchback multiple times, the disguise comes off to reveal his wife and son, in a scene already foreshadowed by Jay’s playfight with his wife and son in the garden at the start of the film.

As Shel laughs, hysterical at the horror of what’s happened, Jay looks at her emotionlessly. The cult’s members begin to applaud.

Killing your own wife and son is the ultimate sacrifice, and the biggest honour. Jay has done it and will now become their new leader.

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