Wow. This was a hard one to sit out. Not because it’s a crap film, but because so many of the scenes are incredibly uncomfortable to watch.
This is a dark, feral drama about a family in free fall, where the son Chris (Emile Hirsch) sets a plan in motion that threatens to destroy all of them. Chris is a small time dealer, and his stash gets stolen by his mom. Enraged and desperate about not being able to pay his supplier back he enlists his father to get in touch with a hit man, Killer Joe, to dispose of the mother and cash out on her life insurance. Joe (Matthew McConaughey) isn’t too pleased about waiting until after to get paid, but decides to claim Chris’s sister Dottie as a retainer.
Dottie seems like she’s balancing on the edge between psychic and mental disorder, and while Juno Temple does a great job of making nonsensical lines come to life, the whole sexy/crazy young girl thing feels a bit done. Her relationship with Joe offers her a way out, but the start of it made us squirm in our seats as Joe orders her to take her clothes off - he turns away to give her at least the semblance of privacy, though the camera lingers. While we do also get to see McConaughey's bottom, this film this film follows the male gaze, often to a degree that feels gratuitous - a stripper at a strip club is filmed for so long that we expected her to have a part to play in the story.
Dottie, especially, is treated very much like an object, and stays in that status up until the very end, where she does, thankfully, regain some sort of agency. The other woman in the cast, stepmom Sharla (Gina Gershon) is put through one of the most difficult-to-watch scenes in the film. Not sure we’ll ever eat chicken again.
But the cast turns out strong, believable performances. Thomas Haden Church is a favourite as the father who stares his way blankly through the film. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, and potentially not even a knife at all but more of a spoon, he delivers throughout the film. Both Juno Temple and Gina Gershon shine their way through their scenes with great chemistry between them and the other characters, providing much of the relationship foundations. Gershon also handles her tough scenes with the right level of defiance and vulnerability. McConaughey does his thing and is quite chilling to watch in his measured wrath. Emile Hirsch might be the weakest link of the actors, but his scenes with Dottie provide much needed humanity for his character, as his desperation threatens to consume him.
It’s shot nicely, and the lights and sounds help create a sometimes almost surreal atmosphere.The script is based on a play by Tracy Letts, and some scenes betray that the lines were originally intended for the stage, but that doesn’t bother us. Some funny scenes echo the claim the film made on the box for being a comedy, particularly the scene with Chris’ supplier offers a few laughs, but in general the film is extremely dark, much to the intention of director William Friedkin, who has previously directed The Excorcist and The French Connection. Killer Joe is a good film, but certainly not for anyone with a weak stomach or tolerance for violence. We’ll just call it Game of Thrones set in a trailer park.
Will it make it into the cupboard? No. Because neither of us actually want to watch it again, or risk either of the kids stumbling over it at home in years to come...
We didn't shuffle the films enough when we put them in the pile, and there has been a lot of gangster action so far - but our next few films will break us into a new field.
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