ben wheatley - kill list

Watching Down Terrace tonight

not bad as a first film. Tight and compact, the plot and characters felt like one of the bloodier Shakespearean tragedies - all these long-simmering familial conflicts setting off a pattern of paranoia, recrimination and murder. I gather this was received as something of a satire of British gangster films? Not having seen any that went right over my head, if so. Enjoyable nonetheless.

I'm going to a preview screening of High-Rise this evening, with Wheatley doing a Q&A afterwards. I will report back...

I'm at the stage where I'd put Kill List in my firm top 5 films of the last 10 years at least. It does everything I like: mixes the mundane with the arcane; leaves things open to interpretation; toys with symbolism and suggestion; demands repeat viewings; all within a UK suburban/rural horror context. Along with Berberian Sound Studio, it's the closest thing we have to a modern Wickerman and absolutely the best way to do horror in the 21st century. Totally psyched to see High Rise and to check out some of his other films.

based on everything you like, suggest clearing your schedule to watch a field in england twice in a row tonight if you haven't already done so

High-Rise was... pretty good. It was played for laughs a lot of the time and did that well, it looked great (superb production design) and had an excellent cast. On the less positive side there were some pretty heavy-handed references to Thatcher and Thatcherism chucked in there (in a DO YOU SEE??? sort of way), and it dialled back on the hard satirical edge of Ballard's book. I'm not sure Hiddleston's affectless performance survived well when up against a certain amount of scenery chewing from the other characters. Definitely worth a watch, but it's a black comedy with some satirical elements.

Some pretty great posters for High Rise knocking about.

Film4 are showing Kill List, Sightseers, and A Field in England this Friday night from 10:45pm. I fancy a rewatch of all three, but I don't think I'll be staying up till 4am doing the triple bill.

mother of god

I am going to stay up b/c I haven't seen either of the latter two. Though now I'm really really craving wine but I don't wanna leave my house, outside is terrible.

is the Ballard book a good one?

I love sightseers so much, enjoy his sense of the landscape as much as the humour

xpost
High Rise might well be Ballard's best book

Maybe it's the use of popol vuh triggering the thought, but it'd kind of herzogian in that regard xp

idk if Ballard ever wrote a bad book tbh, altho of course some are better than others

Sightseers was my introduction to Wheatley but in retrospect it's my least favourite of his. I find it relatively cozy compared to his other films, kill list especially left me gasping for air. Field in England is gloriously disorientating. Psyched for high rise, although how Wheatley's humanism will mesh with Ballard's disregard for anything related to human emotion, I don't know.

Sightseers def the weakest in his ouevre. I think he and Jump (why is she always ommitted?!?) a great match for Ballard, personally

their ouevre, I should've said. see, now you've got me doing it

let me add to my post just there^

this film is fucking incredible

Which

Both

Help out here.

He's such a mensch as well - came off so well in the q+a. He reminds me, not just physically, of Richard Dawson. Maybe the southern version, chronicling the dark & violent folk history of his people with rare aesthetic brilliance. Also he made it quite clear how much Amy Jump gives to their films - she's as much responsible for them as he is.

High-Rise? I mean...there's just so much there, too much to fit in one post, but the number of exceptional shots alone is worthy of mention. And the spectacular use of sound. Even before we dive within the sensory, it's a savage, beautiful banquet.

Amy Jump doesn't even have a wiki page >:(

Kill List obviously amazing too but this felt like it had 30x more money thrown at it, even though it didn't - everything was realised so magnificently, and the folkloric signifiers arguably stitched in even more sublimely.

Sightseers is fun but its basically Nuts In May with psychopaths. If Im up late enough ill give "a field in england" another watch. I found it a but inscrutible last time i watched

Looking forward to High Rise

A Field in England def benefits from multiple viewings (I watched it twice in a row, and then a third time much later with the wife)

AFIE is maybe my favourite one still? but it'd probably be on an all-time list of mine so i'm biased

difficult for a man to know where he stands these days...

my brother was watching Kill List for the first time when I came home earlier. so naturally I watched it again. this time now in about 7 or 8 months and I'm still noticing little pieces of the puzzle slot into place.

Loved Sightseers, but I think I was helped along by the fact that I always thought that the couple from Nuts in May were serial killers, so it's basically my fanon come to life.

Holy fucking shit A Field in England.

My favorite movie of the decade

any of the tv work worth (re)visiting?

Time Trumpet (2006) – Writer (4 Episodes)
Modern Toss (2008) – Director (4 Episodes)
The Wrong Door (2008) – Writer/Director (6 Episodes)
Steve Coogan: The Inside Story (2009) – Director
Ideal (2009–10) – Director (14 Episodes)
Doctor Who (2014) – Director (2 Episodes)

Time Trumpet had its moments iirc, either don't know or am at best ambivalent about the other stuff

my current ordering of the films would be AFiE > DT > KL >> S with very little between the top 3. Sightseers still has lots going for it but i feel like it isn't fully a Wheatley/Jump joint in the way the other 3 are

That's my own ordering, without having seen DT - guess I'll have to

Dt has this lovely claustrophobic tightness, being filmed almost exclusively in a shitty terraced house works nicely as the protagonist gets more desperate. Lack of jump is really noticeable in the third act imo.

the claustrophobia and psychic destructiveness of the family unit is a running theme thru the first 4 movies i think

all of them tbh

Ideal (2009–10) – Director (14 Episodes)

This was a good show. Also had a Mark E Smith cameo in one episode

Yeah, Ideal was pretty good. It handled its surrealism well for a grungy, 'cult' sitcom. Haven't gone back and watched it since it ended, but I wouldn't be surprised if Wheatley's handiwork wasn't evident. Looking back, it was the ~ideal~ place for him to try stuff out. Wheatley has talked about doing a film version, which is on his IMDb as "announced," but who knows if it'll actually happen.

His "Into the Dalek" episode of Doctor Who is visually quite interesting.

I think I hated all of those TV programmes except Time Trumpet, which was still very patchy, and Dr Who which obv is its own thing and I love it.

Absolutely could not get into Down Terrace when I tried to watch it and ended up giving up on it at only a third of the way through - I also don't really like the main bulk of Kill List except for as a build-to-the-end film (like the Vanishing, which is a middling suspense until the fucking awesome ending). I think this might have something to do with me hating all Brit gangster films ever.

Yeah the gangster milieu was something I had to work hard to overcome in kill list, and probably the main reason I rated ss more highly

His 3-min segment for the ABCs of Death anthology horror movie ("U for Unearthed") is up on YouTube. Trigger warnings for gore and shaky-cam:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEBUtraX7KA

.

Hated basically the entirety of ABCs of Death too. That one's okay in isolation, but it's not particularly good either.

Sorry, am hating on a lot of things today, so I'll just reiterate: holy jesus A Field in England. Incredible.

it's definitely my favourite of his films, but it illuminates the others too: they are far more about Real Wyrd England, music, landscape and the family stuff than they are about the gangster milieu that they're subverting

Rewatching Kill List last night definitely made me appreciate the stuff in the build-up more than I had when I didn't know there was going to be That Payoff. And I probably should give DT another go (I keep mentally referring to it as 'Downton Terrace', stupid word associating brain).

last night i kept thinking of Kill List as an anti-camp version of something like The Ninth Gate - the whole film plays thru as a gnostic ritual that we're not admitted into

quote from tom hiddleston on his preparations for high-rise:

"i asked ben to send me films. what i always do is try to paste the inside of my brain with images and music and films and books and give myself a sense of the tone of what we're making. i need to build an imaginative framework within which i can then swing freely. ben asked me to watch (bertolucci's 1970 film) the conformist... he sent me a lot of german prog-rock and amy sent me books on psychological theory from the 60s and 70s"

his character being called R Laing is no coincidence