Sometimes love hurts, and worse times it can be downright toxic. This is the angle that directing duo Alix Austin and Keir Siewert take for their debut feature, Kill Your Lover. The film opened 2023’s Brooklyn Horror Festival and has just closed the first full day of FrightFest horror at FrightFest Glasgow.
Kill Your Lover jumps around its timeline to tell the story of the romance between Dakota (Paige Gilmour) and Axel (Shane Quigley-Murphy). The film opens at the end of their relationship. Dakota is catching up with her friend Rose (May Kelly) and confirms that she is finally ready to break things off. Rose is delighted as it’s clear that there is something about this as yet unseen partnership that is broken. However, Axel arrives home and overhears their conversation. The news shocks him and soon after, he develops a strange skin condition with the potential to rip both Axel and Dakota apart.
Using horror to analyse relationships, especially a toxic one is nothing new, however Austin and Siewert’s perspective takes the road less travelled. Rather than pin either Dakota or Axel as the baddie or the victim, both can be seen as either. Flashbacks fill in the gaps and allow the viewer to form their own opinions about the couple.
When the characters are first introduced to one another, it is clear that it was meant to be a harmless drunken hook-up. Dakota is portrayed as wild and carefree, her apartment wall covered in polaroids of her friends and conquests. In contrast, Axel is more reserved and they are a clear odd pairing from the start. Somehow the pair fall into a rhythm and soon they are living together. Dakota gradually tones down her alternative appearance, and as the scenes progress, she seems to lose some of her initial feistiness. It would be easy to view her as the victim and see Axel as a controlling presence that has captured a unicorn and dulled its sparkle down to a regular horse, but there is far more at play here.
Although he certainly has elements of a controlling personality, Axel is more than a one-note villain. His outlook on life is more conservative than Dakota’s, something that is hinted at during their first encounter when he suggests the photos on her wall should be framed instead. The two are clearly misaligned from the outset and there is an impression that Dakota has settled with him for the grown-up security that he brings. This doesn’t quite paint him as a victim as strongly as Dakota, but does open up a discourse that is often missing from these stories. Relationships don’t start out with the intention of becoming toxic, it is instead something that festers when misaligned people force themselves together for too long.
The most compelling aspect of Dakota and Axel is that everyone at some point in their life or another has encountered a couple like them. Whether it be parents that have stubbornly remained together for the kids, or a couple trapped together by the convenience the other brings, everyone has been exposed to this relationship dynamic. There is even the chance that some watching Kill You Lover for the first time will see aspects of themselves and their own relationship cast onto the screen. For those, the film will hopefully act as a cautionary warning as to why the healthier option might be to sever ties.
As the film flashes back to the past, in the present, all of that bottled-up disappointment, frustration, and repressed aggression begins to manifest itself physically. As Axel gets progressively worse, his toxicity begins to infect those around him in excellently executed ooey and gooey ways. Set primarily within their home, the walls around Dakota and Axel appear to close in around them, the camera staying tight to each, leaving the viewer unable to pull away. The lack of space to breathe heightens the tension and drama, which feedbacks perfectly into their relationship. The make-up highlights the malice and spite pulsing through the couple’s veins and the inclusion of some practical effect heavy gore is the cherry on top of the bittersweet slice of relationship horror.
A beautifully layered analysis about a relationship at the end of its life, Kill Your Lover is remarkable work from both Austin and Siewert. With this as their grotesquely gooey calling card, it won’t be long until one of the big American studios snaps them up to oversee something even more horrific. Before that happens, get in on the ground floor and grab any chance you get to see Kill You Lover.
Kill Your Lover
Summary
An intricate and intimate film, Kill You Lover perfectly explores a toxic relationship that demonstrates how there is often blame and hurt on all sides. Engaging and layered, with plenty of gore to boot, Alix Austin and Keir Siewert have arrived, all guns blazing.
Kill Your Lover was reviewed at FrightFest Glasgow 2024.
