Killer Joe
Directed by William Friedkin
Written by Tracy Letts
Written by Tracy Letts
with Matthew McConaughey, Emile Hirsch, Juno Temple
2011
Even my knowing in advance that the same director made The Exorcist didn't stop Killer Joe being surprisingly discomforting. It replicates many of that film’s shock tactics, a combination of extreme images and insidiously ruptured family relationships. Joe himself, a suddenly respectable Matthew McConaughey, is the antithesis of Father Karras, a cold malevolence who manipulates and threatens others into the worst depths of behaviour. It is also possible to detect similarities in Friedkin’s keen use of space in the respective environments of Reagan’s bedroom in The Exorcist, and the trailer in which much of his new film takes place. Beyond this, however, Killer Joe is its own film: funny, twisted, and unexpected. And it’s perfectly cast, each of the small raft of actors throwing themselves into their role and embracing – especially Gina Gershon – some pretty debasing material.
The story is almost totally devoid of decency. Only a handful of acts or interactions are motivated by anything nobler than self-interest, and those are under suspicion. It opens on a father and son plotting to murder the son’s mother and the tone stays more or less constant. Chris Smith (Emile Hirsch), a violent lowlife, owes a lot of money to people of the type you don’t want to owe money to unless you’re really sure you can pay back the loan, and has hatched a plan to have his hated mother killed so he can save himself with the life insurance. The complicating factor is that the sole beneficiary of said insurance isn’t him, or his father Ansel (who’s resentful of this despite the fact they’ve been divorced “longer than they were married”), but Dottie, his spaced-out younger sister (Juno Temple Thomas Haden Church
Predictably, some of its content has caused Killer Joe to be branded misogynistic, particularly the destined to be infamous fried chicken moment which has become the "controversial" promotion point of choice. I wonder if it appeared in the stage play the film is based on, as the idea of watching it live is even more uncomfortable. But I think that in deciding if a piece of fiction is misogynistic, you can’t forget the question of what spirit the material is intended in. I’m not going to labour the obvious point about the attitudes of a character not necessarily being those of the piece as a whole. That part of the film is perverse and nasty to watch, and I think the gender thing was deliberately used to enhance that; it might be exploitative and cheap, yet I wouldn’t say it was any worse. While the film is shot through with the use and abuse of women, it’s very much there to further condemn the more malignant males. In any case, the humiliation of any particular character simply becomes subsumed into a general tapestry of debasement. One way of considering the film is as a depiction of the fear of death, and the lengths people will go to save themselves from it. In letting “Killer” Joe into their house, the Smiths bind to a force that threatens to destroy them all, and as the threat grows they strip themselves of all dignity, honour, and loyalty in the name of self-preservation. This is a dark family tragedy that will make you laugh and wince.
Tom
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