Killer Joe Reviews

A dreadfully dull black comedy that reckons it's infinitely more provocative and shocking than it actually is.

Full Review | Original Score: D+

The different characters' motivations are sucked into a vacuum which is only punctuated by moments of extreme and quite abhorrent violence.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5

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

Full Review

There is truly never a dull moment but that's not the same thing as good ones.

Full Review | Original Score: 5

Killer Joe, packed with miserable stereotypes doing miserable things with no sense of a higher purpose, plays like a dramatized version of The Jerry Springer Show.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

An ugly, ugly film that leaves you feeling dirty inside, especially if you find yourself being entertained and amused by its characters and what they do to each other.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/10

Less about storytelling than depravity ...

Full Review | Original Score: D+

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

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5

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

Full Review | Original Score: 0.5/4

Becomes unintentionally funny by the grotesque closing stretch.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

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

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

To its own detriment, William Friedkin's splattery, southern gothic return to the screen seeks to amuse as well as shake and stir.

Full Review | Original Score: 6.5/10

Friedkin remains an expert technician to this day, but it's difficult to understand his enthusiasm for this seemingly juvenile exercise in trailer-trash excess.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

More interested in the sins of the guilty than their effect on the innocent.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

The trials and tribulations of a Texas family that nobody would want to spend any time with.

Full Review | Original Score: 0/5

This is a case of good actors given earthy characters but...they are really caricatures and not much more.

Full Review | Original Score: C+

Vile, evil and brutal, it's a bloody mess that's only saved by Matthew McConaughey's impressively repellent acting.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/10

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.

Full Review | Original Score: C

There are no characters here, and no drama. It's just a county fair sideshow attraction - 100 minutes of Shoot the Geek.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4

...a clever story ruined by a fight so poorly done it's laughable, and an unbelievably silly but graphic simulated sex scene in the finale.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10