Kill List

In a neat, suburban house a couple quarrel over the depressed husband's reluctance to return to his work. Later, his colleague arrives with a new girlfriend for a dinner party that descends into a series of drunken squabbles and fights. This could be any well-observed piece of social realism. But then it slowly emerges that the work in question is contract killing, and we also observe the girlfriend surreptiously make a hidden occult mark in the couple's bathroom.

Director Ben Wheatley's ability to infuse the mundane with uncanny dread is perfectly realised when the two men return to their grisly work, beginning an odyssey across a familiar landscape of Travelodges, petrol station forecourts, and ring roads. The performances are excellent, the dialogue unexpectedly rich with dark humour, and (be warned) the violence extreme. It comes as something of a let down when the film forsakes its rich suburban milieu for a climax in the woods, but this is impressive, original filmmaking. [Keir Roper-Caldbeck]