★★★★
There are several things I like about Killer Joe. One of the biggest is that the acting and the dialog are far more theatrical than realistic. The film is very stagy, and in such a self-conscious way that it distances the audience from the horrors that are taking place on screen. It’s an interesting tone, one that constantly reminds us that the action and dialog aren’t really happening but are being acted for a film. The very opening scene establishes this tone as Chris and Sharla become engaged in a theatrical fight scene with stagy dialog and delivery. And this coupled with a pit bull barking outside and scenes of lightning and thunder. Viewers might take a minute to recognize and accept this tone, but once the viewer allows the film its nature, the movie can then take off to where it’s going.
There are several things I like about Killer Joe. One of the biggest is that the acting and the dialog are far more theatrical than realistic. The film is very stagy, and in such a self-conscious way that it distances the audience from the horrors that are taking place on screen. It’s an interesting tone, one that constantly reminds us that the action and dialog aren’t really happening but are being acted for a film. The very opening scene establishes this tone as Chris and Sharla become engaged in a theatrical fight scene with stagy dialog and delivery. And this coupled with a pit bull barking outside and scenes of lightning and thunder. Viewers might take a minute to recognize and accept this tone, but once the viewer allows the film its nature, the movie can then take off to where it’s going.
I welcomed this distancing, too, because of the terrible
things we see on screen. There is a lot
of voyeurism directed at women and stage-gory violence, much of which is disturbing. While the
sexual perversions of Killer Joe are bad enough, we end up implicated in his voyeurism
by looking around him to watch Dottie as he has her undress. And the brutal beatings, particularly of
Chris and Sharla, send Renaissance-style gore flying while we sit in the
audience thinking that these characters deserve their punishment….though not
as intense as the film metes out. I wanted distance in all these cases, and even
with the theatrical veneer, I found these scenes disturbing. And that’s certainly the point in this very
moral movie.
I found myself thinking of the Coen brothers while I was
watching this film. Their movies like
Blood Simple, Fargo and No Country for Old Men use violence in a similar way
and for a similar moral purpose, though the violence in the Coens shocks us to
an awareness of evil while the violence here (more insidiously) involves us in
the very actions we find repugnant. And
the Coens don’t address sexual exploitation at all, while Killer Joe addresses
it both in the form of the movie and as part of the explicit content as we
watch Joe seduce the oddly innocent virgin Dottie.
It’s also hard not to draw a parallel between the character of Killer Joe nad figures of
implacable evil in the Coens, like Gaear Grimsrud and Anton Chigurh. All are implacable, twisted, broken and evil. Joe, however,
seems to have a heart that has genuinely responded to the innocence of Dottie
while evil in the Coens is more abstract and pure. It’s things like Joe’s odd bit of humanity,
the film’s addressing sexuality , and (mostly) the way Killer Joe makes the
audience partly culpable in its horror that distinguish this Friedkin film from
the more analytical work of the Coens.
There are many fine points to this film. It has superb
acting, particularly in the case of Matthew McConaughey, and pitch perfect
design and cinematography. Killer Joe, however, will assault and disturb many viewers. The hardy souls who follow the work through
to its end will come out a little more self-aware, a condition the surprising freeze-frame conclusion emphasizes.
