Killer Joe: William Friedkin

In 2012, the Women Film Critics Circle gave William Friedkin's Killer Joe the awards for Worst Female Images and Worst Male Images. Indeed, Killer Joe, a film about a trailer trash family that hires a cop who moonlights as a hit-man to murder an ex-family member for the insurance, fills the screen with grotesque displays of nudity, violence, and filth. One of the very first shots of Sharla, the acerbic mother-in-law, is a close-up of her hairy vagina. To make matters worse, the vagina in question is only about a foot away from the face of her 22 year old son-in-law. There are only two prominent female characters, Sharla and her child-like daughter-in-law Dottie. Both of them will eventually get naked, perform sex on camera (including a truly horrific scene where Sharla is forced by the sheriff to fellate a piece of fried chicken), and assaulted (Sharla physically, Dottie emotionally). But the two male members of the family, Chris, the son, and his father Ansel, will be violently attacked, beaten, savaged, and shot. It would be easy to dismiss Killer Joe as mere exploitation. But here, Friedkin uses the human body as a polemic, both in its objectification and destruction. In the world of Killer Joe, violence, debauchery, and decay are codified to the point of  normalcy (the entire family is shocked to discover that Dottie is a virgin). In this way the graphic content becomes a kind of extension of the film's diegetic reality. The family eagerly pimps Dottie out to the sheriff as a down-payment on the hit. But this is hardly out of the ordinary from their point of view considering the fact that every other woman in the film is either a sex worker, adulterer, or amateur pornographer. When Chris "has the shit kicked out of him" by two loan sharks, the attackers are almost congenial towards him. After all, it's nothing personal. Are the images of men and women in Killer Joe deplorable? Definitely. But they fit perfectly into the film's insane universe.

8/10