The tag line for this movie reads as follows: A totally twisted deep-fried Texas redneck trailer park murder story.
A big emphasis needs to be placed on the word “twisted” because this movie is that, in every sense of the word, and is not a movie for the faint of heart or those easily unsettled with violence and situations that can turn gruesome with each passing second. Everything about this movie is unsettling and not meant to be good. Everything that is unsettling about the poster I posted with this review is in this movie. There are no good people here, everyone is a bad person, and there are no morals what-so-ever, in fact after this movie is over you might feel the need to take a bath or shower to wash off the filth you have just watched.
I’ve always been interested in the films that unsettle or push boundaries or where critics say things like this about Killer Joe, “You’ll never see fried chicken the same way after you watch this movie.” Saying things like that only make me want to watch the movie even more and see if it's actually true, which I guess is good PR move on the films part because it gives them free press. Let me tell you that saying about fried chicken, as it pertains to Killer Joe, is 100% true. But even after saying that if I had to choose to watch this movie again I don’t think I’d watch it because there just wasn’t anything good about the story line or the people in this movie.
There’s absolutely nothing redemptive about this movie. Some might say the ending is redemptive but if that is redemption then it’s the kind of redemption only Satan could get behind and smile about with pride. If you like movies like Pulp Fiction and Fargo then this movie is up your alley but at least Pulp Fiction and Fargo did have some interesting characters you could somewhat root for. There’s not any characters in this movie you want to root for.
If there is any good in this movie I would say the direction by Freidkin was good. It’s probably one of his better directed movies since The French Connection and The Exorcist. Some of the scenes in this movie are just dripping with tension where I really didn’t know what was going to happen and his direction had a lot to do with that. Even the actual sound of the movie added a lot of extra information to what was happening in the movie as it seemed to heighten what was going on in a scene to a certain degree because of the sound.
Matthew McConaughly did some of his best acting, as he played upon the expectations of his boyish good looks, to play an all-out psychopath with a quiet subtly that ever scene he was in was always just about tilting over with tension. It’s one of the best performances I’ve seen him do. The last thing that made this movie “good” was the production and sets which seemed to really visually capture the trailer park setting only adding to the greasy, dirty feel of the movie which never went away with each scene. I know a lot the movie was shot on location but it was better for that as it added that realism and sleaziness to a movie already ripe with it.
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