Killer Joe

LD Entertainment | Release Date: July 27, 2012

6.6	USER SCORE Generally favorable reviews based on 156 Ratings

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raporgiFeb 20, 2023

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. dont bother. the film just gives up near the end and just descends into an inexplicable orgy of ultraviolence that's just not earned or entertaining. its dumb.… Expand

1 of 1 users found this helpful10

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NFWJun 25, 2015

"Killer Joe" tries to be a funny and gritty black comedy, and while the writing can be clever, the supporting cast give such mediocre performances that almost none of the line delivery works. In addition to that, the third act of the film"Killer Joe" tries to be a funny and gritty black comedy, and while the writing can be clever, the supporting cast give such mediocre performances that almost none of the line delivery works. In addition to that, the third act of the film just becomes a tasteless and vile exercise whose sole purpose is to be as gross as possible just for the sake of being gross. Cup that with the half-assed ending, and all you really have in the end is a sleepy Oliver Stone knock-off that fails to be entertainingly any level despite the fact that McConaughey captures his role well.… Expand

1 of 1 users found this helpful10

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FrekoidDec 24, 2012

This movie is a complete waste of time. If you are into trashy dumb movies with over the top violence and stupidity you will probably like this movie. The ending is beyond ignorant.

2 of 4 users found this helpful22

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krnologyJan 25, 2013

Killer Joe disappointed me due to a weak story and weaker characters. Matthew McConaughey was decent as usual (I tend to appreciate the characters/acting he brings to a film). However, the frustratingly unlikable supporting cast and overlyKiller Joe disappointed me due to a weak story and weaker characters. Matthew McConaughey was decent as usual (I tend to appreciate the characters/acting he brings to a film). However, the frustratingly unlikable supporting cast and overly offensive story elements did not work for me. For those planning on watching this movie, be aware there a moments in the film (at least in the unrated version) that come off as "lets shock the audience by adding something completely pointless and disgusting". I give it a 3 instead of a 0 because Matthew McConaughey, the camera work, the sound, and the editing were not the worst I've seen in a movie (although I'm having trouble remembering a movie I have liked less).… Expand

1 of 3 users found this helpful12

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ShiiraOct 8, 2012

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Marshal Will Kane, in High Noon, gives Helen Ramirez, a Mexican prostitute, advance warning about the gun-slinging menace heading their way. Frank Miller is returning home, and that can only spell trouble for the denizens of this New Mexico outback, especially Helen, since both men were the whore's intimates. Just because the marshal found himself a respectable girl, the former Amy Fowler, it doesn't mean Kane, gentleman that he is, would forget about a past lover. Gary Cooper stood for law and order; his character was an honorable man, a good man. It's what moviegoers expected in 1952. Sure, there was an audience that championed low-lives, the deceitful men and women who populated the dark shadows of film noir, but it's doubtful if those same vicarious thrill-seekers could handle Lou Ford, the anti-hero protagonist in Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me, a roman noir about the deputy sheriff of a two bit Texas town who had a hankering for kinky sex and murdering women with his bare hands. Also released in '52, The Killer Inside Me can be read as a degenerate inverse of High Noon, since not only does Lou kill the whore, but his fiance, as well. Due to the brute force and exceptional cruelty inherent in the violence, it's understandable as to why The Killer Inside Me never made it to the screen, even during the heyday of the crime film. Thompson writes: "I backed her against the wall, slugging, and it was like pounding a pumpkin." The Hayes Production Code, with its strictures put on violent and sexual content, in effect, rendered such an image practically unfilmable, or rather, because of the times, the filmmaker wouldn't be able to carry out the pulp writer's diseased outlook on humanity with any real integrity. Arguably, Michael Winterbottom, afforded with the luxury of celluloidal frankness in the way of visceral thrills, delves into Thompson's imagination with such vivid precision, it borders on unconscionable depravity. His serious grindhouse approach to violence is hard to stomach. When Lou Ford carves up Joyce Lakeland's face, she ends up with malleable skin, bloodied, a surface disfigured by bareknuckle punches. She becomes the smashed pumpkin that Thompson implied. Even worse, in the film noir sense, it's an unjustified murder, because Joyce is no femme fatale. She loves Lou: doesn't even smoke. In Killer Joe, Sharla gets it pretty bad, too, but unlike Joyce, the trailer trash housewife is a femme fatale, the kind who lets another man do her bidding in order to collect on an insurance policy's capital sum(a la Barbara Stanwyck). Schematically speaking, as it pertains to genre, the money hungry waitress gets what she deserves. Returning home with a bucket of chicken from KFC, Sharla asks Joe, "What do you like, light or dark meat?" "Leg," he answers. Not a drumstick, a leg. The word choice is important. The filmmaker applies the "graphic imperative"(in short, what goes on after the screen fades to black) to the classic film noir, through the self-conscious updating of the Billy Wilder film, in which the causation of blood, and especially, sex, would have been left to the moviegoer's imagination. Whereas the police detective sexualizes the drumstick by forcing Sharla to perform oral sex on a deep-fried phallic object, Walter Neff, insurance salesman, does the same to Phyllis Dietrichson's leg, **** it("and the way that anklet cut into her leg."), as the oil tycoon's wife climbs down "that silly staircase." Double Indemnity gets around the unrealistic likelihood of their relationship being a chaste one by making Neff a fallible narrator. He dictates a whitewashing memo into the claims manager's dictaphone, rife with obvious gaps. "So we just sat there," Neff says, but after Phyllis leaves his apartment, he straightens out the bunched-up rug with his shoe, evidence of lovemaking on the floor. With her stepdaughter, whom Neff admits to seeing "three or four times a week," an improper affair is suggested, telling Keyes that "one night we went up into the hills behind the Hollywood Bowl," a secluded place where sex is a potentiality. In Killer Joe, the titular character uses Dottie, an underage girl, as a retainer, when her brother can't scrounge up the money. Not for nothing is Walter's special friend named Lola(read: Lolita), and the filmmaker knows it, since here, Joe wants to run away with the virgin, and more disturbingly, so does Chris, thereby forming a bizarre love triangle. "Straight down the middle," is how Walter and Phyllis describe their murder plot, and perhaps, not coincidentally, the siblings, in Killer Joe, walk down a train track, the place where Mr. Dietrichson's cold body ends up. Dottie, is both, a good and bad girl, the heroine and the femme fatale. Although she has a hand in her mother's murder, the girl is also a victim of child abuse. When Dottie shoots Chris, the girl inhabits both roles simultaneously.… Expand

0 of 3 users found this helpful03

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BroyaxMay 28, 2023

Serait-ce simplement de la provocation gratuite avec ses relents nauséabonds et putassiers ? ou juste un film en quête d’attention (désespérée)… je ne sais pas trop. En l’état, c’est surtout un film poubelle sorti d’une benne à ordures.

UnSerait-ce simplement de la provocation gratuite avec ses relents nauséabonds et putassiers ? ou juste un film en quête d’attention (désespérée)… je ne sais pas trop. En l’état, c’est surtout un film poubelle sorti d’une benne à ordures.

Un film malsain et dégueulasse. Friedkin a visiblement pété un plomb et ça ne lui réussit pas. On regarde jusqu’au bout quand même, pour voir jusqu’où il veut aller… et il y va ce con ! Et les acteurs se roulent dans la merde avec lui. Tout cela est affligeant et d’un mauvais goût terrifiant et exécrable. Un film lamentable et une daube totale !… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

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