Kill List
Certain genres are infectious - not in the sense of having seen one, you have to see more, but in that once you have an element of that genre, that’s what the whole rest of the film is, whether or not it wants to be, or you want it to be.
Generally, we’re talking about the more fantastical end of things: Godard’s Weeekend may be surreal throughout, but the segment where the couple meet (and murder) Emily Bronte, render it in affect a time travel movie. Happy Days features Mork from Mork & Mindy in one episode - therefore, the whole of Happy Days is a science fiction programme that just happens to have very little science fiction in it (unless you count whatever alien pheromones the Fonz must be using). Horror is one such infectious genre - there’s much talk about From Dusk Till Dawn being a gangster movie that turns into a vampire movie - actually it’s just a vampire movie that doesn’t have any vampires for twenty minutes.
Kill List is a dyed in the wool horror movie, and of the very British sub-genre of the folk horror (see also Blood on Satan’s Claw and The Wicker Man). Oddly, most of the negative reviews for this fabulous film seemed irritated that it transformed into a horror movie in the last act.
Transformed? Seriously? The very first shot is an occult symbol being scrawled straight into the screen. Kill List is never anything but a horror, and very specifically a horror movie about the creation of a new Antichrist.
Yes, it may take in some other key British genres - the Mike Leigh semi-improvised domestic meltdown, the geezer crime drama - only to kill them gleefully off like targets on a kill list, but even during their peak, the horrific is never far away: the dinner date scratching the same symbol (which resembles a gun sight, referencing Jay and Gal’s past as soldiers), the meet and greet with a client that turns into a blood sacrifice. Ultimately though, it’s not even a matter of opinion: a version of the ending is played out in the first few minutes.