Dir: William Friedkin
Stars: Matthew McConaughey, Emile Hirsch, Juno Temple
Due to its nature, dark comedy is a subgenre that will always alienate a large percentage of the average cinema-going public. Yet William Friedkin’s latest offering, Killer Joe, dances the line between chuckles and chills with such a careless lack of aplomb that it is bound to find very few audience members who will be completely satisfied with the film by the end credits.
The film revolves around an uninhibited, vacuous and morally repugnant redneck family who seek to have one of their number killed in order to cash in on her $50,000 life insurance policy. In order to get the job done, they hire cop-come-hitman ‘Killer’ Joe Cooper to bump her off; but without the ability to pay him up front, their naive lolita daughter is accepted by Killer Joe as collateral. Jealousy is ignited, deception uncovered and brutality dispensed before a messy final sequence involving sexual humiliation, copious violence, and the gross misuse of a fried chicken leg.
Although Killer Joe features an intense, career-changing performance from Matthew McConaughey, and is in parts both gross and hilarious – by the end of the film it is difficult to totally appreciate what exactly Friedkin is trying to do. When it’s flippant and ironic, there are certainly way more laughs to be had in Killer Joe than some recent mainstream comedies like 30 Minutes Or Less. Yet when at its most sick and malevolent, the viewer is left feeling like a voyeur of the most perverted and amoral kind. This dichotomy between ironic laughs and disgusted groans comes to a head in the final scene, which fails to solidly ground the direction of the film in either camp; with the aforementioned ‘chicken leg’ sequence feeling unnecessarily repulsive.
There is a continuous theme of apathy towards televisual violence that seems to point to some kind of message – although, not unlike Haneke’s Funny Games, it is likely to be seen by most as overshadowed by the frank savagery onscreen. Killer Joe’s scrappy editing and twisted narrative result in a divisive end product, which is likely to delight some, but disgust most.
6 / 10
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