Killer Joe
(USA, 96 min.)
Dir. William Friedkin, Writ. Tracy Letts
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Emile Hirsch, Juno Temple, Gina
Gershon, Thomas Haden Church.
I felt like I had to go to church and atone after seeing Killer Joe. Sick, twisted, and in every
sense depraved, Killer Joe is
black-hearted to the bone. This ultra-violent piece of Kentucky Fried noir
would make a great double-bill with Lee Daniels’ The Paperboy. Like The
Paperboy, Killer Joe is a seedy,
B-movie mess. Joe rejoices in all the
sordid behaviour of The Paperboy, but
it amps the depravity up to the NC-17. A guilty pleasure through and through, Killer Joe is a bloody god piece of
southern gothic for anyone who can stomach it.
However, things go awry, as they always do in the Texas
killing fields when there’s a bunch of hillbillies and gun-crazy white trash
pulling the triggers. Killer Joe,
however, keeps the madness right in the heart of Southern country living—the
trailer park— with Chris’s family providing some mighty good trash-programming
thanks to the addition of Thomas Haden Church and Gina Gershon as his father
and stepmother, respectively.
The four walls of the trailer make Joe a quasi-family drama. Part noir, part horror, part ma-and-pa
film, Killer Joe perverts
expectations of genre and fires in all directions. The bullets always hit
something, though, so while Killer Joe
might be a bit of mess, it hits the bull’s-eye with its heart-pumping, skin
crawling fun.
The small confines of the trailer also show Joe’s roots in the stage. Based on the
1993 play by Tracy Letts (who wrote the screenplay as well), Killer Joe marks the second adaptation
of Letts’s work by the playwright and director William Friedkin. Letts and
Friedkin first worked together on 2007’s eerie paranoia flick Bug, which saw Ashley Judd give a
bravura performance as a twitchy junkie who envisioned herself the Insect
Queen. Killer Joe might not be as
psychologically riveting as Bug is,
but it’s a more visceral, gut-level film experience thanks to Friedkin’s
relentless hand at home-cooked violence and adult-content.
The carnage of Killer
Joe culminates in an almost unbearable act of violence that sees a central
character violated brutally by Joe. Fried chicken will never taste the same for
many viewers, yet Friedkin pulls the scene off with his overbearing indulgence
in the abhorrent action, and the actors’ bold participation is the grisly scene
deserves a side of gravy. Matthew McConaughey is especially good as the hee-haw
gang’s merchant of death, but all the members of the twisted family do a fine
job roasting in the deep-fried deadpan of the film’s twisted humour.
Like Lee Daniels’ The Paperboy, Killer Joe is best
served with a grain of salt and a taste for tongue-in-cheek humour. It simmers
in pulp and offers a buffet of B-movie exploitation, so fans will likely find
themselves cheering for all things warped and depraved by the time the film gets
to the pumpkin pie. I’d hate to see the extra crispy cut.
Killer Joe screened in Ottawa at The Mayfair on Nov. 5th
and 6th.
Killer Joe comes to home video on December 21st.