Running Time. 1 hour 42 mins
Director. William Friedkin
Cast. Gina Gershon, Thomas Haden Church, Emile Hirsch, Matthew McConaughey, Juno Temple.
After a five-year hiatus, veteran director William Friedkin (of The French Connection, The Exorcist and Sorcerer fame) returned to direct Killer Joe, a film based on the Tracy Letts 1993 play of the same name. What starts off as a delightfully dark Texan trailer park noir hastily degenerates into a disturbing, sordid exploitation thriller. A genre rarely seen these days in mainstream cinema.
The assembled cast of low-life characters are ubiquitously foul-mouthed, devious, and dysfunctional in equal measures.
Matthew McConaughey is the eponymous Killer Joe, Joe Cooper, who is hired to kill the abhorrent mother of Chris Smith (Emile Hirsch). McConaughey delights in a slick and sadistic performance. He is unnerving, yet equally beguiling due to his natural southern charm. His predatory interactions with Dottie (Juno Temple) are particularly disturbing.
The penchant for depravity in Killer Joe seemingly knows no bounds. The violence is brutal and graphic, and the nudity and sexual acts are more disturbing than erotic. Cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, who worked with Friedkin on the 2003 film, The Hunted, manages to shoot these sordid actions in such a manner as to avoid sleaziness. This standpoint provides the film with much of its distinctive tone and oppressive atmosphere. The film is beautifully lit. For example, when the lights are dimmed for the family's last supper, the mood is excruciatingly dark, but it is a wonderfully constructed prelude to the blood-soaked finale. Deschanel would appear to have filmed most of the scene from a distance to presumably evoke qualities of the stage play.
Killer Joe was unsurprisingly awarded an 18 rating by the British Board of Film Classification. In the United States, the film was awarded an NC-17 rating rather than an R rating. The difference? An NC-17 rating is used to certify that the film is of such nature that no one aged 17 or under can be admitted, whereas an R rating allows under 17s to attend a film with an accompanying adult. The rating indicates that the film contains adult activity, mature themes, severe language, intense graphic violence, drug abuse or significant nudity. Whilst most studio executives would push for an R rating, the NC-17 rating is sometimes seen amongst directors as a badge of artistic integrity. Even to the point where this means the film may have a limited theatrical release because of this rating. In this instance, the nudity never felt gratuitous and an R rating edit would have almost certainly compromised the effect of the inhumanity on display. The chicken drumstick scene is as disturbing as anything David Lynch, David Cronenberg or Darren Aronofsky has committed to film and is certainly one of the most depraved and disturbing sequences you are likely to encounter in a cinema nowadays.
The result. I can't say I liked the film, but I found it difficult to take my eyes off the screen - much in the same way as I found with The Killing Of A Sacred Deer. Killer Joe is an unapologetic offering from a director that still knows how to shock. A director who once famously said in an interview in The Guardian, "If I wasn't a director, I might have become a serial killer."
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