By Terry Sherwood
On the surface Kill Your Lover, a film filled with nasty thrills, and literally and figuratively biting humour brings new meaning to the term ‘ toxic relationship’ Alix Austin and Keir Siewart have fashioned a gritty satire out of some real pain on the evils of being trapped in a significant other putting it on a knife edge that it pokes fun in moments and shocks you in the next.
Dakota (Paige Gilmour), a former local band punk/ metal singer meets strait-laced partner Axel (Shane Quigley Murphy) only to find that he has literally poisoned her life. The two end up on the screen behaving like a cross between Director Alex Cox’s version of Sid Vicious/ Nancy Spungen and George and Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.
Taking place entirely in two apartments—the one Dakota and Axel share and Dakota’s old one seen in flashbacks with a small cast, Kill Your Lover goes to lengths in showing Dakota and Axel’s early relationship. Dakota likes Axel’s rear end and keeps touching it to his surprise. Oddly this scene has Axel completely naked in front of partially clothed Dakota in the reverse of what the moment would be filmed in a slasher film. She has pictures of all her former lovers and one wall and her various sexual adventures much to the prudish Axel who wants to put pictures of them up. Dakota likes to smoke Drugs, drink, and have a lot of sex in short, the traditional male role.
The two indulge in threesomes, some choking, some handcuffing love all wonderfully rendered without being cheap or clunky on the screen which is wonderful since many horror films gloss over this aspect of their stories as many directors and inexperienced actors can’t handle on-camera intimacy. Being naked or part of you unclothed often costs more so there is a concern for budget.
The horror starts as the arguments about the photograph for Axel’s parents erupt which escalates into possibly losing Dakotas’ job and other areas that some people do battle about. This ramps up the dialogue and the feeling of a threat. Axels becomes ill as Dakota is discussing breaking up with him with her female friend. Axel vomits and begins to get green vine-like veins covering his body with new aggressive behaviour.
Kill Your Lover then shifts gears to graphic battle including gore with two paramedics Ricky ( Joshua Whincup) and Red (Eva Marie Kung). The battle, the stakes, the violence, and screams of corrosive acid that is secreted from black goo get bigger between Dakota and Axel when she steals his heart and breaks it. Nice romantic metaphors abound in this now torture chamber of lust, recrimination and love that turn to hate.
Kill Your Lover is wonderfully directed, and photographed, edited especially the scenes of lust. The picture is swift fast, like a sucker punch romance that even the talky moments do well. The actors are all superbly committed on screen. The soundtrack is outstanding for the world of the film punctuating the ‘Punk Rock Gurl” ethos that Axel and Dakota swirling around in. ‘Rocking good movie Peanut.’
Kill Your Lover screened as part of The Overlook Film Festival 2024.
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