STRONGLY RECOMMENDED - 4.5/5
Two hour and twenty minute horror epics are rare, let alone ones that hold my attention for their entire duration – the Mo Brothers’ (Timo Tjahjanto & Kimo Stamboel) Killers now has a place in that unique group. Brutal, captivating, and often hilarious, Killers constantly challenges its audience as it contrasts beautiful, rich cinematography with despicable acts of violence, soaking the result in some of the darkest wit imaginable. The film sits at a crossroads between horror, thriller and satire – it’s decidedly arthouse and the Mo Brothers regularly aim to disgust and amuse the viewer in the same motion. I’ll try to keep this review as spoiler-free as possible but I can’t make any guarantees – I really want everybody who thinks they’re up to the challenge to seek this film out because it’s truly something special.
Opening with one of the most confronting on-screen murders in recent memory, toying with both the male and female gaze, Killers is a pan-Asian production that tracks the mutual obsession of two contrasting men. Nomura (Kazuki Kitamura) is a privileged Japanese serial killer who posts meticulously crafted and near-professionally produced videos of his murders to public video streaming websites for gratification. Bayu (Oka Antara) is a Indonesian reporter with little recognition, who has dedicated his life to futile attempts at stamping out corruption. Through accident and circumstance Bayu murders two men and is subsequently tracked down by Nomura, who feels a mutual bond, after Bayu posts a video of his killings online. That's just the first 45 minutes and from there things get a little bit insane.
A lot of films purport to have something along the lines of “the most intense final half-hour ever captured”, and most of the time it just isn’t true. I can say unequivocally that Killers has one of the most tense and confronting final thirds (yes, around 45 consecutive minutes) I’ve ever seen. From the moment everything begins to unravel, the Mo Brothers manage to create and maintain a sense of overbearing dread unmatched by others in their immediate circle. It is true masterful direction, with their directorial techniques conjuring a sense of realism that many “realistic” horror films fail to capture.
Within this mode, the Mo Brothers experiment with some truly spectacular, left-of-centre filmic ideas. There’s ongoing embedded aural and visual satire of Japanese soap operas, sequences that jump between traditional steady-shots and shaky shots from a first person perspective, and some ultra-dark humour that emerges in some of the films most upsetting moments. Some will put a few of the more wacky elements of the film down to poor direction however those do not have faith in the Mo. With a familiarity of their prior work, it’s fairly apparent that every odd moment here is intentional. Working with such a long runtime, the Mo Brothers would have had the opportunity to cut around any sequence they were unhappy with, so the fact that everything included has made it into a final cut that, despite its runtime, never feels bloated, speaks volumes to the control that the Mo Brothers have exercised over this film.
Killers is the film A Serbian Film should have been – it’s confronting, it’s brutal, and it has something very important to say about the normalization of violence and misogyny in society by focusing on our complicit role as spectators to this violence, but unlike A Serbian Film it’s subtle. The film never assaults the audience purely for the sake of assault, and most of the violence occurs just out of frame, leaving the terror to stew in the imagination. This is truly unique cinema on the cutting edge of the horror genre and it deserves much wider recognition than it will probably ever see. The Mo Brothers are fast carving themselves a place previously held by the likes of Takashi Miike, Bong Joon-Ho, and Park Chan-Wook as members of the new generation of horror greats.
(this is a significantly condensed version of a review I posted at http://fourthreefilm.com/2014/06/killers/)