User reviews

Killer Joe is a roller-coaster of a movie. At first it seems like a dark comedy, then a crime drama plot starts to uncover, and by the end it becomes downright terrifying. I'm a sucker for these kinds of movies and Killer Joe absolutely nails everything it goes for. This kind of story couldn't be pulled off without the right director. Thankfully William Friedkin knocks it out of the park. You can smell the white trash emanating from the screen. Every detail of every action is given the right amount of attention; every shot has purpose. Not one second is gone to waste. And in order for a story like this to truly resonate you'd need competent actors, and I don't think you could find a more perfect cast for Killer Joe if you tried. McConaughey is absolutely mesmerizing as this badass detective who's a hit-man on the side. The story revolves around a trailer trash family and their plan to exploit an insurance policy on the husband's ex-wife because the son got wrapped up in a bad drug deal, so they hire Killer Joe to do the job. Little do they know, Killer Joe does not f*ck around.

It's a graphic movie but it's not gratuitous. There's a reason for everything that is shown. And the narrative slowly builds to an explosive climax that leaves you flabbergasted. Seriously, the final scene in this movie which is about 10 minutes long, is absolutely phenomenal. Shocking, riveting, unsettling. Matthew McConaughey is downright villainous in this role. It's hard to call him a "villain" because he's straightforward in his motivations, much like it's hard to call the family the "heroes" because they're a bunch of moronic assholes, except the daughter who just doesn't know any better. The line between good and evil is blurred to the point of nonexistence, with Joe epitomizing this duality being the half detective half gun-for-hire hard-ass that he is. It's quite poetic, really. The characters in this movie are scum, and they all get what's coming to them.

Killer Joe is a lot of things, but one thing it's not is scatterbrained. It's entirely focused and cohesive. All the genres it glosses over fit right into this depraved story arc, and it grips you to the screen from beginning to end. This movie certainly isn't for everyone, but if you can stomach Killer Joe, you won't soon forget it.

For anyone who has seen any old Matthew McConaughey films, this is not his standard role. He ain't the blue eyed hero or the RomCom interest as his main part in this dark film noir.

Based in the American South, we have one dysfunctional family who are plotting to kill the mother for the insurance money. Into this they call in 'Killer Joe' to do the job.

It's a nasty movie, and treats the characters like trash. A very cynical outlook on humanity and you may not stomach all that happens. The sexual politics aren't going to please many people, and it is a discomforting film.

Yet it is still very well written, and uncomfortably involving. The acting is top notch and the pace is well done with good twists.

Before you watch it, if you've not got a strong stomach for films, then approach this one with caution. Not one for everyone, but still a very good film.

You will have to look hard and long for a film that's as quirky as Killer Joe. William Friedkin must have been inspired by the equally quirky Fargo in doing this film.

Both films are about people who get into criminal enterprises that really don't have the talent. Bill Macy decides that good way out of his financial difficulty is to arrange to have his wife kidnapped and his rich father-in-law extorted for the ransom in Fargo. In Killer Joe, young Emile Hirsch goes into the drug dealing business and owes some big bucks to some nasty people. So a quick way to some ready cash is to kill his mother and get her insurance policy via the backdoor as his sister Juno Temple is the beneficiary.

Major difference between Fargo and Killer Joe is that Macy and his family are good middle class Minnesotans. Hirsch, Temple, their father Thomas Haden Church and his second wife Gina Gershon are Texas lowlife trailer park trash. The first wife, the mother of Hirsch and Temple is Julia Adams and truth be told no one is really going to mourn the passing of this one in any event.

Hirsch even has a hit man picked out. It's Matthew McConaughey who is a Dallas police detective and doubles as a hit man on the side. He's both mysterious and dangerous and gradually inserts himself into their family group, especially since he demands as a retainer the nubile body of Juno Temple in lieu of the cash they don't have until a settlement comes forth.

Just like Fargo everything and anything that can go wrong does with this foolproof scheme thought of by a fool. If I had to single anyone out in the cast it's Emile Hirsch who is a degenerate and a lowlife, but still you feel a bit of sympathy for him because he's so pathetically dumb. And McConaughey in the title role will also make you take notice.

Killer Joe while not as good as Fargo is still good enough to savor. I agree with another reviewer who says you will either like it or hate it, but won't be indifferent.

This movie is that. You wanna see what's there. When you see what's there, you wanna look away....but you can't. Having said that, I enjoyed it. Messed up, but entertaining.

This movie is trash. It's about stupid, terrible people being awful, plotting murder, doing it badly, inviting the devil into their home, and then paying the consequences when everything goes pear-shaped. It's also deeply, darkly humorous in a way that connects with my own sense of humor. I mean...this is ugly, vulgar, and explicit stuff, nothing I'd recommend to many people, but I did get a kick out of it. This is also the second time I've watched it, and I was just consistently entertained at this condescending look at people that Tracy Letts apparently hates with a passion. I have to attribute a lot of that tone to Friedkin, though, finally finding a comedy that he can direct well. It just needed to be extremely lurid.

The Smith family is...filled with terrible people. There's Ansel (Thomas Haden Church), the patriarch of sorts who works as a mechanic but has to ask for money from his waitress wife Sharla (Gina Gershon), stepmother to his two children Chris (Emile Hirsch) and Dottie (Juno Temple). Dottie is the only remotely good one of the bunch, something of an innocent who's never had a boyfriend and spends most of her time in her room. Chris has heard through his real mother's boyfriend, Rex, that his mother has a $50,000 life insurance policy with Dottie as the sole beneficiary. He also discovers a police detective, the eponymous Joe (Matthew McConaughey), who will take hit contracts for a $25,000 retainer.

The problems start with Chris wanting to employ Joe but not having the retainer, even though he knows ahead of time that it's required. And that kind of sets up everything: Chris is an idiot. The whole family follows along (even Dottie says that killing their mother is a good idea...showing the limits of her goodness). But they invited a contract killer (who's also a police detective at the Dallas police department) to come along and operate on credit, essentially. The depth of the stupidity and the escalating terrible consequences are where the entertainment, for lack of a better word, in the film.

And things just get worse. Joe decides to take the job because he sees Dottie outside his first meeting with Chris and Ansel, deciding to take her as his retainer. That's just seedy, but it's also the kind of consequence of inviting the devil into your home. I don't think it's some great revelation that Joe is supposed to be the devil. He's so thoroughly evil and manipulative, taking advantage of people's weaknesses, knowing more than them, being smarter than them, and willing to go much further than them. It's just kind of deeply, darkly humorous to watch him systematically take their lives apart.

There are revelations to be had as well with Chris dodging toughs he owes money to, the mother's death happening in a way that doubles the payment, and Sharla's connection to Rex coming out, culminating in an extended bit of exposure as Joe lays everything out in terrible fashion...including the inventive use of a chicken wing in a punishment. It's horridly grotesque how it all plays out, and it's obvious that everyone was laughing hysterically behind the camera through most of it. I really get the sense that Letts and Friedkin just connected on this darkly comic level, and it's why Friedkin chose to work on a second adaptation of one of Letts' plays after the completion of Bug.

But, that appreciation really does rely on the an audience getting into the film's deeply sadistic and meanspirited groove. I mean...this is ugly and it wallows in that ugliness. It's not high art, it has something to say, and it's actually pretty funny in an uncomfortable, anti-comedy sort of way. It's hard to explain beyond just saying, well, I thought it was funny when Joe punched that person in the face because of the timing and everything, but, well, I thought it was funny.

And that's kind of amazing because the two previous attempts at comedy from Friedkin were The Brink's Job and Deal of the Century, neither of which are, you know, funny, so this third attempt actually hitting the mark is something of a surprise. I would probably attribute most of the comedy to Letts himself and his original play and adaptation, but comedy has a lot to do with timing on set. Just hiring Peter Falk didn't create comedy on The Brink's Job, so something has to be said for Friedkin managing the pieces on set here. Maybe it's partly attributable to him having the stage play itself to operate off of to find where the comedy should be and how it should play out. I dunno, but it works.

So, I'd recommend it to a very, very small slice of the population: people I know love their comedy deeply uncomfortable and in bad taste. Friedkin manages the production well with his focus most obviously on his actors. Those actors all do very well, and my favorite has to be the obvious choice of McConaughey as the titular Joe, enjoying every scummy minute he has on screen. The overall package may be difficult to recommend, but I find a good bit to enjoy.

Look, it's all what you expect out of your hour and a half or whatever it is. I'll give this film credit for at least doing something from a bit of a different angle and with its own sort of flavor, if a bit bland at times. McConaughey is very good, although I've seen him do better. But that's not his fault, that's just the script. The script is good, and it has huge potential to be realized on screen. It's just that this attempt, for all of its attempts at skewing the paradigm, lacked nuance and, I don't know just quality. It's as though the crew and Director were in a rush or something. Emile Hirsch is good, and of course, Matthew McConaughey is good, but I wasn't that impressed with the rest. Though, as actors, that may not be their fault either. The dad character was ridiculous. There's no way to get a grip on who that person is and why they are that way and why they act that way and why anyone would act that way. That character was an utter fail.

The bottom line is that this movie was worth my time and that's really the most basic metric I can use for reviewing a film. Obviously there's a lot more that can be said, but I'll give this one a go ahead and recommend it.

To start with, I'm a bit of a William Friedkin fan. My all time favourite film is The Exorcist and any other film I see from him gets me slightly worried because I know he has a pretty sketchy body of work.

So I saw the obvious other Friedkin choice and that was The French Connection which I thought was really good. I saw his first play adaptation, Bug, which I thought was pretty special and I started to realise how much he pushes the performances of the actors and this is clearly his priority over any other aspect of film making. Yes it has to be visually appealing but the subject matter of his work is always reliant on performances.

So Killer Joe is another adaptation of a play by Tracy Letts and again has to rely on strong characters with convincing effort to make it come to life. Thankfully Killer Joe delivers on this. In fact, if it wasn't for William Friedkin's ability to add extreme pressure onto the actors by limiting the shooting to two takes per scene, I honestly think it would have lost it's attraction pretty quickly.

The film takes you into the bowels of low-life Texas and really emphasizes the grim reality of life for some unfortunate families. It was surprising to discover a black comedy breeze come over the film and it did come at you pretty surprisingly (especially scenes including Thomas Haden-Church). The cinematography improved on that point by having close up shots of Joe Cooper preparing himself for his first on-screen appearance to the world and blasting mere seconds of TV trash full screen to the audience to make a clear point on red-necks having a low attention span. All of this made me chuckle but it still kept me interested by providing a simple enough plot and letting the great performances carry it along.

Of course there has been a lot of talk regarding the late scenes of the film. Joe's well spoken manner and calm demeanour are pushed to the edge and his rage is unleashed like a shaken coke can that's been opened up. It came as a real shock to me and the suspense was unbearable enough to make your heart pound. Whichever way  it makes you feel at the end, I'm sure you would leave the characters behind knowing it's ended in a really good way and is sure to be discussed well after the credits.

All in all, it's a good piece of work. The effort from the actors far outweigh the visuals which is perfectly fine for a story like this. I'm pretty sure Killer Joe is going to be a reasonable success at the box office and will certainly grab a lot attention when the eventual DVD release comes our way.

The method of this film is meant to be uncomfortable and dark. In every attempt to delude us with witty dialouge, and consistent staging, something truly awful will populate the screen eventually.

This comment does not contain any spoilers nor will be very long.

It should be obvious by now that this not a movie for sensible people. It is not a soft movie, with some suspense and some shooting. It is a hard movie to watch with a brutal but simple plot. It is violent and disturbing.

Having said that, the performance from the actors are superb. They make you believe this is a true story, rolling in front of us to witness. The director does a very good job, the cinematography is good and except for one seen all the action is very believable.

Kudos to the writers, the 5 main characters are a particular kind of f****d up person. And this movie is seriously f****d up. An immersive experience that is hard to replicate, it deserves my 7/10.

I don't know why I didn't enjoy this more than I did. It seems to have all the right ingredients for a down and dirty post noir with fine performances all round and Friedkin's steady directorial hand. Actually for the most part I was engaged, even if the central premise regarding the life insurance is a little corny and the family just a little too cliché trailer trash. It is tough and it is amusing but as things proceed and begin to get a little silly it is the central performance of Matthew McConaughey, cooling pulling on and off his black leather gloves and giving his stare, that holds this together and hold you in its grip. Towards the end, things change and I can only assume this is the 'fault' of the original stage play, where the high drama might have worked better, within the film it jars and spoils the torrid but believable situation that has developed. There is little development of the characters, which is fine, but when we are asked to suddenly see things so differently, as here at the end, that lack of feeling for the characters matters a lot. So the inconclusive end is a bit of a mess, not to mention the chicken scene and in my view tends to spoil what had been a sensationally good start.

It's certainly a film that I will not forget but a film that I won't probably revisit it again. Tense, good pace, very good acting, strong themes, violent, but It's cold and miserable as hell and sometimes you need a strong stomach to take everything is showing and trying to tell you.

In a word - interesting.

It's dark, messed up, funny, ludicrous, strange all at the same time plus I'll probably never eat fried chicken again!

There is much to admire in "Killer Joe", a film which depicts a number of characters ill-suited to their predicament slowly, yet surely, tightening the noose they only discover to be around their necks in the first place by the time it's too late. It is several things: a very funny black comedy; an engrossing stripped down drama portraying a family in a way that, if it was British, you would describe as "kitchen sink"; a mobster movie; a coming of age story... There are many places wherein it feels like a Jim Thompson novel, or at least an adaptation of one of his novels.

Fittingly, the film opens with a bang, and then does not really let up. Lightning cracks across a Texan sky and rain pummels down; a young man by the name of Chris Smith (Emile Hirsch) arrives at his father's trailer in the dead of night and demands everyone wake up to let him in. He's in trouble - owing a local drug cartel $5,000 because his mother, divorced from his father and living separately, lost him the cocaine he was holding for them. His father's new wife, and the little sister they have custody of named Dottie (Juno Temple), are the epitome of dysfunctional – they shout; argue and bicker. Sharla (Gina Gershon) even answers the door nude from the waist down and it is revealed through quick-fire dialogue that Chris once beat his mother up.

At this crucial juncture, director William Friedkin very subtly introduces the aforementioned Dottie – somebody very physically cut off from the ensuing argumentative chaos unfolding next door. She is younger, more child-like. She has fridge magnets glued to her bedroom door which spell out her name and sleeps in a room decked out with stuffed animals clutching a cutesy snow globe. In a town of hicks; rednecks; lowlifes; loose women and grizzled men, Dottie is a photogenic blonde with an ample figure and a girlish allure. Temple plays the role in such a way that she is temptress without striking us as being some who necessarily knows what that is – her performance is subtle smiles and happy faces; snappy, friendly backchat which neither means nor infers any offence.

Strapped for ideas, Chris suggests the family have his and Dottie's mother – his father's ex-wife – killed. The reason? She has a $50,000 life insurance payout in Dottie's name. This would take care of Chris' money problems and it would eradicate a member of the public who has been a thorn in the sides of everyone else. When Dottie was a baby, for instance, she tried to suffocate her with a pillow.

The vehicle through which to make this a reality is the titular "Killer" Joe Cooper, played by Matthew McConaughey, who has come a long way from when would be ridiculed by the British press as "Matthew Mahogany" for yet another feature in the mould of "Failure to Launch" or "Fool's Gold". Joe is a local law enforcer in the city of Dallas, but his real paycheques seem to come from his moonlighting as a hit-man. He is both refined and calm – he's a professional dealing with amateurs and possesses his own series of principals and regulations to do with his work. Contrarily, we do not sense the Smith family have ever had a principal between them their whole lives. They meet in a disused games outlet where pool tables lie wrecked and pinball machines beyond repair – what follows will essentially come to form a series of very dangerous games, of both mind and body, involving these two parties.

Friedkin does not hold back in "Killer Joe" – within the first ten minutes, we have had presented to us blunt female nudity from both the waist up AND down. It is often an extraordinarily violent film in places, but the very distinct atmosphere of calm and method which dominates proceedings I think merely accentuates the violence. The film somewhat effortlessly combines the best of what Tarantino and the Coens were doing around twenty years ago with the manner about which Billy Wilder's very slowly cooks the situation in his 1944 feature "Double Indemnity", wherein characters are allowed to come and go on the issue of ending somebody else's life for an insurance payout before snowballing into further trouble once the murder has actually happened. There is plenty to recommend in "Killer Joe".

The first and potentially most important remark I have to write about "Killer Joe" is that it's a film you have to allow for yourself to sink in… It's been a week now since I watched it at the Brussels Festival of Fantastic Films and, although I was rather underwhelmed at first, I deliberately postponed writing my user comment simply because you immediately sense that it's a slow-brooding and nerve-tickling effort that you cannot wholeheartedly judge straight away. Perhaps I wasn't blown away initially – contrary to many other viewers judging by the other comments – but the my ultimate conclusion is nevertheless similar: "Killer Joe" is a very curious and deeply intriguing modern film-noir with several twisted and daring undertones, a nearly unclassifiable atmosphere and familiar actors depicting very atypical characters. The film is adapted from a stay play penned down by Tracy Letts, whose previous work "Bug" inspired director William Friedkin once before already, so this evidently translates itself into a handful of criteria the audience has to take into account. There will be a lot of dialog, but simultaneously a restriction on the amount of action and rather limited number of characters and set-pieces/filming locations. In return this means that, for a movie like "Killer Joe" to work, the dialogs have to be extremely well-written AND the performers have to depict their characters with strong conviction and confidence. Otherwise, the film has a wholesome fails miserable because you don't have the action and scenery to bring much diversion.

Perhaps it wasn't fully transparent – to me, at least – when leaving the theater, but "Killer Joe" definitely does contain these qualities. The dialogs are terrific, while the character drawings are truly elaborated and brought in a unique fashion by the ensemble cast. And unlike as in most stage play adaptations, there's quite a lot of diversity in filming location and – especially throughout the third act – a whole lot of uncompromising violence. The plot is relatively simple and straightforward. Somewhere in a Dallas area trailer park, twenty-something lowlife Chris knocks on the caravan door of his father Ansel because his mother threw him out and stole his stash of cocaine. Chased by his creditors, he informs his father (and reluctantly also his new sexy stepmother) about his mum's life insurance in favor of his sister Dottie and puts a plan to the table to have her murdered. Chris even already knows who to engage for the dirty job; a notorious FBI agent named Joe, who moonlights as a hired killer. Joe's fee turns out to be a bit too expensive, but the rather eccentric assassin exceptionally accepts an advanced payment in the shape of a date with the innocent teenage virgin Dottie. What ensues is your average kind of predictable situations and foreseeable practical issues, but this time with very unpredictable consequences and brought by atypical characters. I can write down a whole paragraph alone on the utterly bizarre character of Joe Cooper, compellingly played by Matthew McConaughey, but it still won't suffice. I concur with whatever other reviewer who claimed that he's somewhat like a Coen brothers' protagonist, but more "inbred". Even though they all deliver adequate performances, I'm not 100% convinced by the Smith family members… With the exception of Thomas Hayden Church, they're not enough "white trash" in my opinion. It was a great joy to see Gina Gershon again in a significant role and an even bigger joy to watch Juno Temple strip off all her clothes, but they are too "clean" to be labeled as trailer trash. Quite a lot of reviews warn for sickening violence and sequences that are hard to stomach, but I personally think that's a tab bit exaggerated. "Killer Joe" admittedly features some raw and explicit footage, but the most shocking and controversial elements actually lure beneath the surface. Killer Joe Cooper's sexual preferences, for instance, or the complete absence of family values within the Smith's trailer. William Friedkin was present in Brussels to introduce his newest film to a sold-out theater of avid cult fanatics. It somewhat hurts to say that he comes across as a rather unpleasant and pretentious person in real life, but hey, he undeniably remains a masterful director who delivered a few immortal classics in the 70's ("The Exorcist", "The French Connection"), a couple of hidden cult gems throughout the 80's and 90's ("To Live and Die in L.A.", "Jade") and now even some courageous experimental flicks in the new millennium. I guess that earns you the right to be mildly snobbish

Chicken-fried thriller serves up a Cracker Barrel-like buffet of some of the worst characters & upsetting situations I've ever seen in a movie; though completely abhorrent, like a grisly car crash, I found it difficult to look away.

Greetings again from the darkness. Every so often there's a movie that just defies description and leaves me at a loss for analysis. Initially I thought maybe I could come up with a comparison, but that has proved futile. It also falls short to imagine if David Lynch, John Waters and the Coen Brothers collaborated on a film. And then it hit me that really the most likely legacy for this movie is as a midnight movie favorite. A cult film if you will. It has the twisted humor and borderline caricature characters and enough wild scenes and bizarre lines of dialogue, that I believe the midnight crowd will embrace it wholeheartedly.

The first surprise is that it's directed by 76 year old William Friedkin, who is best known for his 1970's classics The Exorcist and The French Connection. He even throws in a bit of a chase scene here just to remind of us of his timeless scene from the latter. The story is from playwright Tracy Letts who won a Pulitzer for August: Osage County. Mr. Letts took the inspiration of the story from a real cop in Florida, moved the setting to Texas for obvious reasons and then filmed in Louisiana for economical ones.

The next surprise is Matthew McConaughey, who has made a career of playing Him-bo's in farcical rom-coms that seem only to exist so he can be filmed without a shirt. Here, he plays the titular Killer Joe Cooper as a fastidious, meticulous detective who runs a murder-for-hire "business on the side". Killer Joe has a couple of rules and demands that the details be just right before he agrees to a job. But then he bends his rules when he meets Dottie (Juno Temple), the virginal sister of Chris (Emile Hirsch) and daughter of Ansel (Thomas Haden Church). She becomes the retainer when father and son can't come up with actual money for the job.

The best way to describe these people, including and especially Ansel's second wife Sharla (Gena Gershon), is they are the epitome of trailer-park hicks who are not merely dysfunctional as a family, but even moreso as human beings. They barely have money to get by in life, but it's spent on beer, cigarettes, fast food and horse racing. When a small drug deal goes bad, Chris (the scheming son) comes up with the idea of killing his mother (Ansel's ex) to collect the insurance money. A touch of Double Indemnity thrown down by the Beverly Hillbillies.

So hustler son and simpleton dad hire Killer Joe for the job. Think of the plan from Blood Simple, now imagine it's carried out by the cast of Dumb and Dumber. Things go awry when Joe meets Dottie. It brings out a side of him hidden by his smooth vocals and starched black exterior. A side best compared to the sadistic nature of Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet.

No more details need be provided, just know that the story and the people are twisted and demented, and the violence and sexuality are the type that make a film tough to watch at times. That level of discomfort is assuaged by the laugh out loud moments offered by the dialogue, but merely leaves our brains desperately gasping for coherence.

Clarence Carter's "Strokin'" is a fitting ending to the film, and be warned that while I will never view canned pumpkin the same again, that pales in comparison to what Gena Gershon must think of when someone offers her a piece of fried chicken. (http://moviereviewsfromthedark.wordpress.com/)

I first found out about 'Killer Joe' from UK film critic Mark Kermode who said that, after watching the film, he wasn't actually sure whether he liked it or not. I was intrigued. I wondered whether you automatically knew whether you liked something or not after experiencing it. However, after viewing Killer Joe, I am also wondering whether I liked it or not.

Killer Joe is about a trailer park family on the wrong side of the law in America. The son owes a lot of money to some local drug dealers and decides to have hit-man Joe Cooper (or 'Killer' as the title says) shoot her so that they can benefit from the insurance money. Definitely a film of an adult nature. For a start, it's very 'gritty.' It has many brutal beatings, murders and acts of a s*xual nature (including torture). Yet it's also strangely comic (in the darkest, blackest sense possible). You certainly get a feel for the characters, even though none of them are in any way likable.

It's kind of like a window into another world. A world full of car crashes that you have to watch, but don't necessarily want to experience firsthand.

Did I enjoy it? I certainly didn't turn it off. Would I want to watch it again? Maybe. In a while. Right now it's a bit too fresh in my head. I think it may warrant a second viewing, but only if I'm in the mood for something pretty dark and nasty. I can see quite a lot of people hating this for being just generally horrible. To be fair, they may have a point. This is one film that you'll either be able to stand or you won't.

Those of you into 'light and fluffy' beware - you have been warned!

The story of corrupt cop is a staple for most classic film makers and one that Friedkin is all too familiar with. However this does not hinder him from bringing a fresh approach to an already interesting screenplay. An uncompromising film that allows Friedkin to showcase all the tricks he has acquired throughout his extensive career. With clever casting lead by the flawless McConaughey, Killer Joe is a dark and twisted story that draws the viewer into the sordid truth of human morality. A film that does not try strive for artistic perfection at the expense of entertainment. A refreshing blend of experience and youth allows this film to stand out from the crowd and is certainly worth a watch. A must see for all KFC enthusiasts.