Music, Style & Culture

Interview: Kill List Director Ben Wheatley

The man behind the year's best thriller is joined by his stars.

Kill List is a film we're going to shout about until every discerning film goer has experienced it. Released on 2nd September, it's the second feature from Down Terrace writer/director Ben Wheatley, and is almost impossible to describe.

A genre-twisting masterpiece, on paper it's the story of a retired hitman persuaded to do one more job. Sounds familiar, right? Then prepare yourself for sly gallows humour, bone-chilling atmospherics, intense kitchen sink drama, and simmering, uneasy tension in a film that is epic in ambition. Read our full review here.

Wheatley gets incredibly natural performances out of his main cast, with Neil Maskell the ex-soldier turned contract killer, MyAnna Buring his forthright wife, and Michael Smiley his best friend and business partner. Add to this an unsettling, haunting score and nerve-shattering editing, and you have yourself something extraordinary and unforgettable.

We spoke to Wheatley, Maskell and Buring at this summer's Empire Big Screen. Enjoy a spoiler-free interview below!

Can you describe Kill List in a nutshell?
Ben: It's a film that's got lots of different elements in it - it's got some horror, some thriller. All you really need to know is that when we come out of screenings people have been really, really upset.

What inspired you to make it?
Ben: It came from having a bunch of actors I really wanted to work with. Amy and I tailored the script to the people. Another element was that I really wanted to make a horror film. Another was that... when you think of Down Terrace, you start with specific images and work back from there. Kill List was taken from a lot of dreams that I had as a kid. We wrote the recurring nightmares down and thought, how can we fit those together?

Did you ever feel like you were going too far?
Ben: No. We were really happy people felt ill. Otherwise you're just pissing about. If you make a film that's supposed to be a horror and you come out going, "huh, I'm really happy", then it's not really worked. If you're going to commit to the genre you've got to commit 100%. We didn't pull any of it back. No one in the process ever said pull it back. I was relieved it was an 18 certificate.

The trailer hints at certain aspects of the film - how much say do you have in the edit?
Ben: We did our own edits. We cut a version that was an even more arty version of it, and we showed Optimum and said this is kind of what we like. We had experiences on Down Terrace where they give the whole thing away. They really liked it, and took it to a professional trailer company. The first time you see it, you're like, fuck, please let it be good, and it was brilliant. I think everyone agreed it wouldn't serve the film well to explain it too much. All you need to come away from the trailer thinking is that it's spooky and moody.

Your imagination runs wild during the film. How did you decide how much to reveal to the audience?
Ben: When we were writing it we knew everything, and we discussed it a bit with the cast. But it's a thing where, I kind of felt like watching American episodic telly. When there's a question it's really exciting - like the first two seasons of Lost, or the beginning of Battlestar Galactica, where they're asking all the questions. It's really brilliant, but then when you get over the top of the mountain and start answering the questions, you're like, "oh, it was that, oh fuck, it's not what I thought it was". It's finding that point, where it's all questions, where you're still excited about the questions. That's the sweet spot, and it's what we tried for. I could tell you now what it all meant, but it would suddenly put the lid on it, your own fears. It's like when he watches the TV and there's something on it that makes him really upset and he goes for the librarian. If we'd shown what was on that telly... it becomes like that Joel Schumacher thing, 8mm, where it's just people in gimp masks with some chains. Maybe that would be scary to some people, but others would just be, eh. But it's a Room 101 thing, where you just don't know what it is. Some of the reviews have gone, he looks at some child porn. Does he? I never said that. It's not explicit in the film. That's the viewer looking into the film, and the film looking back at them and showing them their own fears.
Neil: I suppose I can never tell anyone what was actually on it on the day!
Ben: It was Michael Smiley in his pants, dancing.



Would you say it's different to what people might expect from a British film?
Ben: Maybe for a British film from this period [smiles]. It wouldn't have been so strange 30 years ago. If you're looking a Seventies movie, you'd expect to work a little bit harder. It's not all served up to you - it doesn't tell you what it is, or how to feel about it. You have to work it out by watching it.

Do you take into account people rewatching the film?
Ben: It would be nice if people watched it again and again, much like Titanic. A date movie. That's what we've seen with Twitter, people coming out like, "what the fuck. Ooh I've gone back again, and now I like it more, or now I understand it." People say the ending comes out of nowhere, but it is already considered. It's part of a whole. The puzzle's not complete, but there's enough there.

Do you think people are now spoonfed by Hollywood?
Ben: You look at television and HBO stuff, and that's sometimes quite hard to understand. The Wire's quite tangential, and Deadwood's quite difficult. But if I went to see a Spider-Man film, I didn't want it to be like Tarkovsky, you know?

MyAnna and Neil, you have dialogue credits, so can you tell us if there was improvisation, particularly in the funnier moments?
MyAnna: Ben has a great system of working. He'll let us work on the script, then he'll let us improvise, then he'll insist we paraphrase and then go back to the script. In that process, you have everything. When you have actors like Neil Maskell and Michael Smiley you can just go on the most beautiful and phenomenal tangents. I think it's a wise move.
Ben: We'd run the scenes and sometimes not call cut, so we'd find moments that would work really well. With the editing, we established early on we'd jump-cut so we could always take the best bits of the performance and push them back together again. It's one of those things where it expands out with the improvisation, but when it comes to the edit it disappears back down to the choice nuggets that work. But it has that sheen of being made up on the spot.
Neil: What comes out of that improvisation is not that the dialogue gets used in the film, but that you can do much more between the characters that is unspoken. We had those conversations. In real life, you have a partner or close friend, there's little you have to say in certain situations. Without sounding poncy, the scenes that are sparse, there's a lot more being said. There are little references between me and MyAnna in regards to the boy, but that's really there, as it was there in the improvisations with the boy. You've got a version of the history that is present without having to show loads of jabber.
Ben: Exposition is boring as fuck. You'll get a few people moaning they don't know what's going on, but they do really - they just have to catch up. I don't care. I don't want the characters have to parrot out a load of stuff explaining the plot. It's wrong-headed.



What's been your favourite reaction from people that have seen it?
MyAnna: This face [shocked]. Literally!
Neil: My voiceover agent saw it with a friend of mine, who didn't know each other at all, but I had two tickets and sent them along. As they came out, my friend said to her "are you okay?" and she burst into tears [laughs].
MyAnna: We do sound really dark don't we? Everyone was crying! It was brilliant!
Ben: Someone was ambulanced out of the SXSW screening. If I continue the story on it's not quite that exciting... [laughs]
Neil: Had they choked on some Tex-Mex? [laughs]

What are your future plans?
MyAnna: I'm shooting a BBC2 six-parter called White Heat, which spans over '65 to 1990. I've seen myself in my forties!
Neil: I've got a couple of films coming out. It's weird - I had a load in a row last year. Turnout comes out two weeks after Kill List, then Dexter Fletcher's film Wild Bill another couple of weeks after that. I've just come back from Berlin. The actor Frank Harper has just directed his first film, St George's Day. And another one called Piggy, from a new director called Kieron Hawkes, with Martin Compston.
Ben: I'm busy! We've got two or three films at the moment. We're doing a film with Nick Frost next year [I, Macrobane], we're in prep for another film to shoot in six weeks called Sightseers for Big Talk [produced by Edgar Wright]. We're doing an American sci-fi film but produced in the UK. You've just got to write scripts! Write them, and people option them. That's facetious innit, but it's something that came off the back of Down Terrace, which is that we could just make stuff if we wanted to. It's a psychological thing of not caring. Right, we'll make our own movies then - if no one wants to fund them we've got our own money to do it. We just keep moving forward. There's a lot of us, producers, crew and the same actors, and we just push forward. The energy helps. It's not as important to me to be making expensive films, as the hop, skip and jump to get a big budget film, as the control you get is very different. A little film you pay for yourself is the best filming experience you'll get, but a big budget brings a broader canvas. I fear that situation of taking five or six years between each movie. Directing's a muscle and you have to exercise it. John Ford did a hundred movies and it's not a coincidence his movies are really good.

Ben, is there a fluffy rom com in you?
Ben: Yeah there is! But I don't know how fluffy it will be by the time it comes out! That's why we're doing two comedies in a row now. My background is comedy. But the crime and horror genres lend themselves to being dark, which is why they've got that way. I don't think I'll ever be doing a 3D dance film necessarily.

Our friends at Filmbeat caught up with the three last week - watch their interview below: