Home Kills: NZIFF Review

It's to the bleak countryside and the macabre outings of a pair of brothers forced into the darker side of the business we go for Haydn Butler's Home Kills, a film that feels Fargo-esque in some of its execution and features the most surprising appearance of a Neighbours actor you're likely to see at the film festival.

The story of Cameron Jones' level-headed desperado Tom and Josh McKenzie's loose cannon Mark, Home Kills sees the frustrated brothers trying to keep their family Home Kills animal business afloat as debt comes for them. With Tom about to expand his family and a sea of debt threatening to swallow them all, salvation comes after the unlikeliest of encounters and the most depressing of situations.

But with local crime bigwigs being surprised by Tom and Mark, the net begins to tighten..

Home Kills takes the small town mentality of New Zealand to an extreme and pushes it through the prism of some of Hollywood's criminal prowess. 

Yet, with a large serving of black humour and lashings of melancholy through the desperation, the film becomes a depressingly familiar tale of trying to do the right thing and escape your circumstances, well-enacted by all those within and graced by a strong lead from Cameron who becomes further weighed down as every minute passes.

Butler manages to turn these two into plausible characters, with every decision lying heavily and etched deep on Cameron's furrowed brow, the film takes its grimy aesthetic and pursues it as far as it can go. From small town entanglements to the underbelly of crime mentality, Home Kills captures the bleakness of rural living to a tee.

There's little optimism here and a resolution feels like a defeat rather than a victory, but Butler's dogged pursuit of pushing the boundaries makes Home Kills the kind of Kiwi dark treat that's all too rare these days.