Average Rating: 6.8/10
Reviews Counted: 147
Fresh: 113 | Rotten: 34
Violent, darkly comic, and full of strong performances, Killer Joe proves William Friedkin hasn't lost his touch, even if the plot may be too lurid for some.
Average Rating: 6.2/10
Critic Reviews: 35
Fresh: 22 | Rotten: 13
Violent, darkly comic, and full of strong performances, Killer Joe proves William Friedkin hasn't lost his touch, even if the plot may be too lurid for some.
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When 22 year-old drug dealer Chris (Hirsch) has his stash of drugs stolen from him by his mother, he has to come up with six-thousand dollars quick, or he's dead. Desperate, he goes to the trailer-park to see his father, Ansel (Hayden Church), and he lays out the plan. Chris's mother, who everyone hates, has a life insurance policy that would clear up his debt and make them all rich. The problem is that Chris' mother is very much alive. Enter Detective "Killer" Joe Cooper, a hired hit man with
Jul 27, 2012 Limited
Dec 21, 2012
$0.9M
Independent Pictures
All Critics (147) | Top Critics (35) | Fresh (113) | Rotten (34)
If you like your movies filled with twisted humor, sexual perversion, psychological intimidation and sudden violence, "Killer Joe" is the flick for you.
You will either love "Killer Joe" or run away screaming. I absorbed this NC-17 nail bomb with awestruck admiration.
[Friedkin] has retained his touch ... all these years later. And in Matthew McConaughey, he has the perfect vehicle for madness.
You end up feeling sorry for all the actors forced to humiliate themselves, except for McConaughey, whose portrayal of sadistic, manipulative evil is mesmerizing.
If y'all like your comedy with a Lone Star drawl and as black as Texas tea, then by all means tuck right into Killer Joe.
In the immortal words of Wayne's World: "You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll hurl."
It's like a cheap, nasty dessert: completely devoid of nutrition, probably very bad for you, but kind of delicious while it briefly lasts.
Only the faint-hearted or KFC kitchen staff should give it a miss.
Stage-to-screen adaptations are rarely this primal, and it's been a long time since a William Friedkin film has felt so vital.
The humor magnifies the horror, and vice versa. Like the inflammatory Dr. Strangelove, we've sewn these seeds, and we deserve whatever is reaped from them.
Killer Joe will leave many people in shock, confusion, and in need of a thorough shower by the time it's done.
The scene with the fried chicken drumstick might cause Colonel Sanders to repurpose one of his famous buckets as a barf bag.
Killer Joe is a white-hot fever dream of a film. A toxic swill of sex and violence, Joe is mordantly funny, tantalizing and, ultimately, shocking.
Matthew McConaughey gives an intensely wry performance while director William Friedkin applies his old-master craftsmanship to a brutal, ugly story.
Killer Joe will both infuriate and impress, but when it impresses there is nothing quite like it. It plays on the senses and lingers in the mind, McConaughey is brilliant and Friedkin finds himself in his best form in years
Resembling yard sculptures in a trailer park, where trash becomes art, "Killer Joe" is a Picasso signed with a branding iron.
Sick and twisted in the most interesting ways.
A daringly impressive and darkly funny work, which sees its director William Friedkin return to the audacious spirit of his early films.
Aside from Letts scathing one-liners the best reason to see the film is McConaughey. His Killer Joe is a quite brilliant variation on cool villainy.
It unfolds like a prank. After freewheeling dangerously and thrillingly for 90 minutes, it skips the relief and goes straight to the punishment. After that: The final, puzzling twist suggests that it may not have been a joke at all.
May well do for the fried chicken leg what Friedkin's The Exorcist did for split-pea soup back in 1973.
If it weren't for Matthew McConaughey's tightly coiled performance, the nasty white-trash drama "Killer Joe" wouldn't be worth the powder it would take to blow it to hell.
It is so focused on the depravity at its heart that watching it is like subjecting yourself to a nightmare that sucks the air slowly from your lungs.
Friedkin's twisty-turny career, 47 years and running, shows no signs of slackening.
...a clever story ruined by a fight so poorly done it's laughable, and an unbelievably silly but graphic simulated sex scene in the finale.
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