Killing God review: God comes calling in this Spanish comedy.
Killing God review by Abi Silverthorne.
Killing God Review
What would you do if God came to the door? Killing God (Matar a dios) is a film that not so much gently ponders the eternal conundrum of our relationship with the big Him but smashes it over the head with a machete and leaves it out to dry.
Foregoing the shifty territory of hardcore philosophising, writer-directors Casas and Pinto keep things firmly on the dark-comedy ground. And this is dark comedy at its most surreal and most dreadfully screwball – oddly memorable in all the interesting parts of the mind. Waiting for Godot, this ain’t.
The premise is simple but laden with cinematic possibility that is, for the most part, met. On a dark and stormy New Years Eve a small family converge at a dreary hilltop manor to celebrate. Or they would be, only: married couple Ana and Carlos can not stop arguing about their various affairs after Ana spent a night with her boss, Carlos’ brother Santi has to be supervised for any suicidal plans after his long-term girlfriend left him, and the men’s father could drop dead any minute of a heart condition (one that doesn’t deter him from drinking heavily and visiting prostitutes).
When God finds the four of them, it is less a state of harmonic seasons joy but an entangled quartet of marginally bad people. Pinto and Casas may be saying something microcosmic about the state of humanity here, as all the sins come to light throughout their dinner – greed, infidelity et cetera, and Carlos himself takes the cake for pretty much every phobic prejudice one can think of, a sexist and a racist, and a narcissist on top. The message is breezy in tone but still there: terrible things breed where terrible people live.
And the terrible does come. When God appears (with one of the funniest ‘monster’ entrances in horror) its with an ultimatum for the family. As the New Years Day dawns, God will kill off the entire human race, except for two people. Only two people can be saved, and the four of them must choose which two it will be. With the clock ticking, the tension mounts as the foursome bicker their way through the pros and cons of their own lives (they, hilariously, barely touch on the race outside of themselves) until they decide that perhaps there is an easier, more violent way to deal with the moral dilemma – just killing God.
Killing God Review
Such a high concept brought down to slasher ideals is sure to upset some, and baffle others, but this is a film that definitively pulls off its imaginative concepts in every way, carried off with perfect campy execution and mischievous humour. It would be impossible not to be entertained.
The screenplay is absolutely golden, full of sharp one-liners (“Good, my heart will kill me soon” Father replies when Carlos asks how he is) as Casas and Pinto’s writing oozes wicked originality. The family dynamic is etched out with a light touch through the silliest conversations at the start, so that when everything descends into chaos we are familiar and confident with the familial paradigm in which all the betrayals and backstabbing will occur.
The direction is equally as accomplished, blocking scenes with a quirky composition that compliments the strange story and weirdo characters, and setting the action almost totally within the insular bubble of the house – a setting that I wish had only been utilised more, but is fantastic alone with the mounted heads (hunting decor) and the holiday lights that twinkle ironically over the scenes of bloody chaos in a winking little extension of the film’s blend of horror and laughs. Miquel Prohens’ cinematography is a delight that only adds to the films’ peculiar charm.
Francesc Guzman’s original score is also a highlight of the film’s design. An ingenious soundtrack of spooky caterwauling and giggling that rises in time to the mischief of God, it elevates simple scenes to sheer B movie joy.
Amongst it all, it is the performances of the cast, unlike the family, that compliment each other flaw-lessly. Eduardo Antuna in particular, as Carlos, is a star for drawing such physical comedy and watchability from a character who is unlikeable on paper. Itziar Castro as the long suffering Ana has the films greatest arc and Boris Ruiz is fantastic as her sympathetic but pessimistic father-in-law.
Emilio Gavira’s Dios (God) is one for the history books. An alcoholic curmudgeon who shrieks intermittently at his human company and carries cigarette butts instead of souls in his pocket, it’s a riot to watch but also a sobering answer to the omnipotence paradox; God is all powerful but also just at the end of his rope with humanity.
However, it is the fate of David Pareja’s Santi that gives the film a touch of poignancy at its end. The most gracious of the four, played with affecting vulnerability from Pareja, his depression adds something new to the debate of life or death that, although not discussed to its full potential, is still touching. Irony or tragedy, or both, Santi’s story may cut the jokes but it sure outlasts the rest.
Killing God includes the loss of limb, of faith and of life, but never, delightfully, loses its cunning sense of humour. This is a first rate slash-fest; A sarcy, Scooby Doo story, as full of dark laughs as it is of dark shadows.
Killing God review by Abi Silverthorne, August 2018.
Killing God screened as part of Arrow Video Frightfest.
