2. Kill List
The final scene of Kill List is enough to haunt your nightmares forever. Sickening and chilling all at once, the climax of Ben Wheatley's first wide-reaching film packs a fierce and sudden blow. Whilst the opening sequences of the film are emotionally dark, there is never any hint of what's to come in the maniacal final stretch. Neil Maskell and Michael Smiley star as two hardened soldiers from the British military, who take up a contract killing job upon their return to the UK after being stationed in Kiev. There is a deliberate effort on Wheatley's part to manipulate the viewer and he leaves a lot of threads hanging, and the sense of intrigue he creates leaves us locked onto the screen from beginning to end. The film doesn't simply explode into mayhem like several others on this list. It creeps up on us, with the result being an unforeseeable venture into one the darkest corners of British cinema. The film has a surreptitious shift from violent drama into distressing macabre which is both bold and frightening; and whilst there is always something sinister snarling beneath the surface, the direction that Kill List actually ventures into is one of the more undeniably shocking twists seen in UK film for years.