Ben Wheatley’s “Kill List” has been a difficult film to pin down. It’s been getting tons of play on horror sites, but at the same time the basic, couple sentence summary makes it sound like an action movie. There are definite elements of both genres, with a heaping helping of psychological thriller thrown in for good measure. If you cornered me and forced me to stuff it into a single pigeonhole, I’d have to go with that last one. “Kill List” fits into a similar space as movies like “The Shinning” and “Rosemary’s Baby”. I even had twinges of “A Serbian Film” at times. There is an element of the occult, of some sinister, unknown outside force encroaching on the narrative, driving characters closer and closer to the brink of madness.
What would happen if aliens invaded a tough London neighborhood populated by rough and tumble street kids who are used to scrapping and fighting for everything they have? The answer, at least in Joe Cornish’s badass feature film debut “Attack the Block”, is that these trespassers would be in for one hell of brawl. In my mind “Attack the Block” is in the running for my favorite movie this year. It works as a straight-up genre film, and those of you looking for your monster fix will get all that you can handle. But it is also tightly executed in almost every capacity. The pacing is spot on, it is tense as hell, you can feel the energy on screen, and though it isn’t an overtly political story, there is an underlying social commentary that you find in the best science fiction.
