Banal at the beginning and preposterous at the close, the British horror film “Kill List” jumbles together wildly incongruous ingredients to create a dramatic mush.
We learned from “True Lies” that even trained assassins can have dreary home lives, and dull are the domestic squabbles of parents Jay (Neil Maskell) and Shel (MyAnna Buring), each of whom is vague about their military background. During a dinner party with another couple, Jay’s old buddy Gal (Michael Smiley) and his girlfriend Fiona (Emma Fryer), it becomes clear that Jay and Shel’s relationship can’t go on like this. So naturally Jay and Gal depart to take a job murdering three citizens, each of them seemingly an unlikely target.
There is a crusading moralism behind Jay and his increasingly gruesome style of killing, but mainly he’s just an uninteresting psychopath, and the generic, potato-y actor who plays him is incapable of making his descent intriguing. The outlandish level of violence serves no actual purpose, except possibly to make a fatuous point that these hardworking blokes are the most honest souls in a deeply depraved world.
The last act, a mash-up of “The Wicker Man,” “Eyes Wide Shut” and “Race With the Devil,” gets credit for being freaky, but not, alas, for being original. And the turn toward campy horror is silly when it should be shocking.