Killer Joe: Critic Reviews

Throws down a dare by expecting its audience to be the cool connoisseurs of the story's "comic" outrageousness, then rubbing viewers' faces in close-up scenes of brutality that reasonable people ought not to be able to watch.

Lurches from realism to corn-pone absurdism and exploitation-cinema surrealism.

A gruesome, brutally violent and queasy trailer-park nightmare from deep in the heart of Texas.

William Freidkin's film is full-frontal in every sense, an unabashed pulp romp stuffed with ugly acts and primal screams.

The bone-crunchingly violent film has luridly entertaining moments. But by its resolution, this sleazy Southern Gothic nightmare has simply gone off the rails.

The action and dialogue find the same squalid level in time for the climactic scene, the cruel humiliation of a central character.

It's as mean as a snake.

Friedkin, a son of Chicago's working-class South Side who has swerved back and forth over the thin blue line of order and chaos throughout his career, is a fine fit to the material.

"Killer Joe" offers us a sneering image of trailer-park Texas, in which everyone is stupid and amoral and trashier than their cluttered front yards.

"Killer Joe" is, at bottom-and I mean bottom-ugly and vile, not to mention dumb and clumsy.

Like a deep-fried Twinkie at the State Fair of Texas, Killer Joe is gooey, flavorful and bad for you. Dig in.

Friedkin make no attempt to soften the characters' monstrousness, and thank hell for that. This is rave and rage and purge acting.

That everything should go wrong is no surprise, but the wrong turns are taken so viciously -- Gershon, in particular, is appallingly treated, in closeup -- that they lead the film, adapted from the play by Tracy Letts, to the brink of abusive farce.

"Killer Joe" is one hell of a movie. It left me speechless. I can't say I loved it. I can't say I hated it.

The film harks back to the low-budget chamber pieces of Friedkin's early career, and he creates a perfect storm of montage and character interplay within a confined space, which culminates in a disturbing loss of humanity.

Killer Joe is twisted pulp, and the actors chew on it bravely, boldly, and with varying degrees of success.

You will either love "Killer Joe" or run away screaming. I absorbed this NC-17 nail bomb with awestruck admiration.

If you like your movies filled with twisted humor, sexual perversion, psychological intimidation and sudden violence, "Killer Joe" is the flick for you.

[Friedkin] has retained his touch ... all these years later. And in Matthew McConaughey, he has the perfect vehicle for madness.

It sends you home reeling, but wondering what the point of it was, and why so many worthwhile people bothered to do it in the first place.

A sleazy and pointless film about sleazy and pointless people, "Killer Joe" reminds us that what Quentin Tarantino does isn't easy.

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.

Less about storytelling than depravity ...

Friedkin has crafted another enjoyable slice of frenzied pulp minimalism.

In the immortal words of Wayne's World: "You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll hurl."