Reviews for this film from our members:
- Jason Bailey @ DVD Talk
- Excerpt: Many people will find “Killer Joe” ugly, hateful, and vile. But those who have the constitution for it will find it thrillingly audacious.
- Tim Brayton @ Antagony & Ecstasy
- Excerpt: A movie that doesn’t know what “failure of nerve” means.
- Stephen Carty @ Flix Capacitor
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: featur[es] a career best performance from Matthew McConaughey as a cooly creepy sadist with a gentleman’s veneer, yet this dark comedy seems all rather pointless, a hundred minute build up to a single punch line. The Coen brothers did this better years ago…
- Rich Cline @ Shadows on the Wall
- Excerpt: Friedkin directs scenes with a vicious snap of energy, sparking vivid performances from a terrific cast.
- Edwin Davies @ A Mighty Fine Blog
- Excerpt: Killer Joe plays out like a southern fried spin on Double Indemnity, with the dark humour and Faustian bargains of Blood Simple thrown in for good measure. As with James M. Cain’s work, much of the bleak pleasure of the film comes from getting to wallow in the sheer awfulness of its characters, then to experience the giddy schadenfreude thrills of watching things go from bad to worse to even worse, until the story reaches a point where the characters start to – figuratively speaking – devour each other.
- Tony Dayoub @ Cinema Viewfinder
- Excerpt: KILLER JOE plays like a movie one would see in the multiplexes of an alternate universe where art reigns over commerce.
- Mark Dujsik @ Mark Reviews Movies
- Excerpt: there is no way to say it without employing a pun—it leaves a truly bad taste.
- Dustin Freeley @ Movies About Gladiators.com
- Excerpt: A chaotic mix of greed and indifference in William Friedkin’s most recent film.
- Cynthia Fuchs @ PopMatters
- Excerpt: William Friedkin’s Killer Joe invites you to feel at once repulsed and thrilled by the horrors unfolding so inevitably in its final moments.
- Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: Bile, evil and brutal, a bloody mess that’s only saved from oblivion by Matthew McConaughey’s impressively repellent acting.
- [New – 5/23] | Vadym Grygoriev @ kinoblog.com [Ukrainian]
- Josh Larsen @ LarsenOnFilm.com
- Excerpt: …wears its sleaze like a ratty stole dug out from a bin at the ‘thrifty.’
- Dan Lybarger @ KCActive.com
- Excerpt: Killer Joe is a deep-fried, jalapeño-flavored noir that tests audience endurance. It dares viewers not to look at the depravity onscreen while gently nudging viewers to revel in it. Playwright Tracey Letts and director William Friedkin (the 77-year-old mind behind “The French Connection” and “The Exorcist”) have managed the rare feat of creating a film that’s both sickening and oddly satisfying.
- Matthew McKernan @ FilmWhinge
- Excerpt: Killer Joe is a jet black comedy and marks the apparent return from obscurity by William Friedkin, best known for The French Connection, The Exorcist and Cruising and not as well known for his less groundbreaking killer tree film. With Killer Joe, is Friedkin back at his best?
- Mark Pfeiffer @ Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema
- Jamie S. Rich @ Portland Mercury
- Excerpt: For most people, the term “guilty pleasure” means enjoying something that isn’t very good—but I’d rather apply it to a film like William Friedkin’s “Killer Joe,” a scuzzball delight fueled by an uncomfortable morality and an unapologetic sense of its own depravity.
- Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: Some of it retains the boisterous appeal of black humor, but as the story spins into its final act, it gets a bit out of control in its embrace of violence and sexual depravity. There is a scene involving a bucket of fried chicken that may make it hard for you to ever read the F in KFC quite the same way again.
- Marcio Sallem @ Em Cartaz [Portuguese]
- Tom Santilli @ Examiner.com
- Excerpt: As it progresses, it becomes weirder and weirder culminating with a gonzo ending that had people in the theater laughing and gasping simultaneously.
- Amir Siregar @ Amir at the Movies [Indonesian]
- Cole Smithey @ ColeSmithey.com
- Excerpt: William Friedkin’s dark, funny, and sexy black comedy is a triumph. “Killer Joe” makes “Fargo” seem like a rom-com.
- Matthew Sorrento @ Film International
