‘Kill’: Edinburgh Review

Dir. Rodger Griffiths. UK. 2023. 89mins

Taking its inspiration from 2018’s Calibre, Kill is a genre offering set in rural Scotland which involves a burial in the forest and a late-night revisit to secure the scene of the crime. The cast is tight-knit – just four lead players – and the screenplay is stretched even more tautly as allegiances come and go in a family of dark secrets. Rodger Griffiths makes his debut with this low-budget thriller, shot in 21 days: it’s the kind of film where the line: “It’s not like he’s coming back!” is followed by a loud knock on the door.

Both a calling card for its cast and crew and a fun exercise in plotting

In other words, Kill is both a calling card for its cast and crew and a fun exercise in plotting. Young actors Daniel Portman (Game Of Thrones) and Brian Vernel (Gangs Of London) relish the opportunity to show off their chops while Paul Higgins, often a kindly or hapless figure onscreen (particularly in Amando Iannucci comedies) is cast against type as a tyrant of a father. Premiering at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, like Calibre, this is an appealing exercise which holds no surprises for genre fans but enjoys itself thoroughly throughout. Snappy editing from Rachel Erskine helps greatly, especially when the circular nature of the plotting starts to feel repetitive in the final stretch.

Kill starts out on a stag hunt, where a father (Higgins) and his three sons Henry (Portman), John (Vernel) and young favourite Vince (Calum Ross) are armed and in search of prey. In a twist of expectations, and before audiences can properly figure out that the stag in the distance has a rope around its neck and is tethered to a tree, dad Don turns out to be the target. John can’t pull the trigger, so Henry does the deed as Vince watches on. A shallow grave has been prepared, and all three shovel in the earth to say goodbye to dear old dad.

On return to their farm, and after a flashback which indicates that their mother (Anita Vettesse) was killed at Don’s hands, the brothers’ bonds start to unravel. Fey Vince has left the key to dad’s safe on his buried corpse. Here we see their personalities: Henry is trying, and sometimes failing, not to become like his father, while John is more measured and Vince is a little otherworldly (young actor Ross has some outsized performances to square up to, with varying levels of success). 

Two things occur to the audience: firstly, there’s the suspicion that the key – and the safe it opens – is possibly a McGuffin; and secondly, their decision to go back and take it from their dead father will almost certainly result in them discovering an empty grave.

That’s the thing about Kill – it knows that you know. It would like you to enjoy the ride, though. Lines like: “If he’s alive, he’s angry and has a gun!” underscore the obvious in an deliberately amusing way. Sweatily claustrophobic tension mounts and there’s a lot of paranoid shouting and twisting backstory as well as a cousin named Miller (James Harkness) who keeps appearing at the wrong moment. His sense of occasion may end up being the death of him.

Professionally mounted (it’s no surprise to see that one of the producers, Lee Brazier, was involved with Calibre) Kill holds no surprises, bar the fact that something so familiar can still be retold in a fresh way. Like with the 2018 film, it marks a promising future for its creators; Calibre, after all, ended up being the film that knocked Jack Lowden into the public’s consciousness. Like that film as well, it’s no advertisement for stag hunting in Scotland.