I have a real soft spot for folk horror. Whether on film or in the work of writers like M R James, the idea that the incomprehensible, the utterly terrifying, could be lurking in plain sight is one that I find endlessly fascinating. It isn't the big-budget horrors that tend to investigate this side of things for a variety of reasons, which is perhaps just as well—originals like Ben Wheatley are more suited to wrapping their own sensibilities around the core concepts.

What _Kill List_ does exceptionally well is build tension, hardly letting up from the opening seconds. Jay and Gal are ex-soldiers turned hitmen who haven't been working in several months because of an unspecified disaster on a previous job. Jay's home life is chaotic—the money has run out and he's emotionally scarred, struggling to connect with his wife and son. When he has Gal and his girlfriend over for dinner, a chain begins that really takes a turn for the macabre.

The plot is kept at arm's length throughout, Wheatley prioritising atmosphere and cranking up the dread as every minute passes. Given a new assignment, the people involved become stranger and stranger. Gal seems confused and alarmed but Jay sails through almost serenely, happily fulfilling his mandate. In the final third of the film, it tips over into full-throated horror, something that many critics didn't like. Personally, I loved it—the arcaneness of it, the foreshadowing, the nods to earlier giants of the genre.

The final revelation thrilled rather than confused me, and if you like your horror embedded in the countryside, in rituals and signs, then I can't recommend _Kill List_ enough. Few films are bold enough to suggest so explicitly the inherent strangeness in day-to-day life as well as the terrifying nature of the familiar when inverted.