3.38 - KILL LIST (2011) and Ritual Punishment

This week’s film is the incredibly disturbing — don’t watch it if your constitution is in any way delicate; it will stay with you — Ben Wheatley film KILL LIST. We talk about how this film takes a while to get going, but when it does — oh boy! Also on the agenda today: social realism, Lovecraftian horror, and religious symbolism.

 

Next Week

Our next Ben Wheatley film is A FIELD IN ENGLAND, available here: 

 

This Week’s Media

WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT (1988): Robert Zemeckis, Bob Hoskins, Christopher Lloyd

JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM (2018): J.A. Bayona, Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard

TROLLPLAY (2018): Alice Fraser, Cal Wilson, Sami Shah

 

Recommendations

UTOPIA (2013—14): Marc Munden, Adeel Akhtar, Paul Higgins

STRIKE (2017–): J.K. Rowling, Tom Burke, Holliday Grainger

DOOMSDAY (2008): Neil Marshall, Rhona Mitra, Bob Hoskins

THE WICKER MAN (1973): Robin Hardy, Edward Woodward, Christopher Lee

 

Footnotes

Firstly, there’s more on social realism in cinema here: http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/1037898/index.html. These articles are good on folk horror and the like: http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/where-begin-folk-horror, http://www.bfi.org.uk/news/10-great-british-rural-horror-films. We talk about the mundanity — or banality — of evil, and there’s much more on that idea here: https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/02/07/hannah-arendt-the-banality-of-evil. If you’re not familiar with Lovecraft’s Cthulhu, as mentioned by Rob, there’s much more here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cthulhu. Finally, this is the Mark Gatiss series to which Rob refers (sadly no longer available on the iPlayer): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_History_of_Horror.