Kill List

Ben Wheatley’s Kill List opens with a strange white symbol scratched onto a black screen. Runes often appear in folk horror as warnings and as religious rites, signaling an ambiguous dread. The dark intention behind them represents an unknown threat hidden from plain view, the mark of a clandestine community of true believers. Wheatley and his co-writer Amy Jump, who are married, never share the precise meaning of this symbol with their protagonists or their audience; that information is reserved for the upper-class cult that pulls the strings in this 2011 film. Part crime thriller and part kitchen sink drama, Kill List has been canonized as an essential work of folk horror, particularly by British critics. What’s unique about the film is that the genre’s usual suspects—cultish worshippers—consist of priests, politicians, and other powerful people who can use their influence to get away with murder, both literal and figurative. But the killing is not merely murder; it’s a ritualized sacrifice to bring about political change. Thoughtfully blending genre tropes and connecting them to modern sociopolitical concerns, Wheatley’s disturbing classic is among the twenty-first century’s finest works of folk horror.

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