The world is divided into two sorts of film people – those who enjoy being scared and those who get frightened and hide behind the couch
HERE WE are again, scared out of our wits, hands over our eyes, wondering how we ever decided to pay for this. I don't need this, I've got the Irish economy to watch. When I look away I'm looking into the ear of the woman beside me who is also looking away, in the same direction, and so is her male companion. Kill List, the fashionable film of the moment is phenomenally violent – the film's sound fairly squelches along – and pretty scary.
And to think I could have gone to Friends With Benefits, a presumably lovely romantic comedy with Justin Timberlake and the sexy one from Black Swan(Mila Kunis).
Fear is usually free. On Sunday morning, after the Ireland v USA match in the Rugby World Cup, the post-match analysis phone call arrived. Our friend said that his whole family was hiding upstairs because he’d been roaring so loudly at the television. His heart was beating so fast that he was getting buzzing in his ears.
At least his kids had their mum to run to. At Kill Listthere are no mums. Kill Listwould be quite anti-mum, and all that mums stand for. Kill Listhas a young mother who doubles as a sexy blonde and also as a colleague and professional counsellor to her husband, when they are not having screaming rows. In other words, she is quite a realistic figure.
For sissies, that's the problem with Kill List. It is far too realistic. At the start. We were a quietly confident audience; the sort of audience that has read the reviews. "Five stars from The Irish Times," as the man two seats down from me put it. It's nice to know you're at the right film. And we saw it in cinema three at the IFI, which is upstairs and so intimate that it feels rather like watching a film in someone's spare room. Which is the last thing you want when you're watching Kill List, thanks very much. It was a subdued crowd that left the cinema when it was over.
The world is divided into two sorts of people. The sort of people who watch horror films and action films in order to relax, and who enjoy being scared. And the sort of people who get frightened at the ads and hide behind the couch as soon as the Dr Whomusic comes on. This division has never properly been explained – it may be something to do with serotonin versus dopamine uptake – but it is absolute.
I'm just saying, don't go to see Kill Listif you get frightened at the ads. Our problem as sissies is that we forget our true nature. We hear about a frightening film which everyone is praising, and we think we can take it. We make the booking, we travel into town, we look forward to discussing this fashionable film with our friends. But we can't take it. And life's too short for that type of suffering.
The thing is that, as a sissy, you leave such a long gap before you go to another scary film, that by the time one comes round you have once more forgotten that you are a sissy. Kill Listwill remind you. A young sissy will try to tough it out. An older sissy must ask herself if this is how she wants to spend any part of her weekend.
Kill Liststarts in the domestic warzone – never in the history of cinema has gravy been such a flashpoint – and proceeds to Travelodge Hell. The windswept car parks, the grim hotel meeting rooms, the leaden skies, are all reminiscent of Get Carter(1971), that chilly film which starred Michael Caine before anyone went to the gym. Northern Noir, you might call it, if you lived in the UK. Or Midlands Noir. Only it's tougher than noir. And a lot messier. Pornography is a turning point in the plots of both films. Pornographers deserve no mercy, obviously. Which is handy.
The Brits, they have this kind of thing down pat, or at least they used to. Intelligent, black, deeply unpleasant films that look terrible. And with Kill Listthey return to the genre which has no name. It is one of their great strengths, just like television soap opera. Viewers of Get Carterwill recall that Michael Caine threw one of the very bad guys off a brand new multistorey car park, and that the very bad guy (actor Bryan Mosley) later went on to become Alf Roberts, the loveable proprietor of the corner shop in Coronation Street, and husband of Audrey.
In Kill Listour two heroes were once British soldiers serving in Iraq. They are now guns – and knives – for hire. One of these soldiers is a member of that unreported tribe within the British army, the Northern Irish Catholics – a new type. At the same time there is a boss figure here, the man who commissions the two killers, who is playing pretty much exactly the role taken by the playwright John Osborne in Get Carter. Kill Listcomes in a long line of films sissies have watched through our fingers – Straw Dogs(1971) and The Wicker Man(1973), to name the two films of this exact type that spring most immediately to mind. Kill Listis a good film. I saw it so that other sissies don't have to. Sissies should stay home.