Horror comedies are tricky to pull off. You always end up leaning more heavily to one over the other and either sacrifice your jokes, or not be scary at all. Writing-directing duo Albert Pintó and Caye Casas have no aspirations of making their debut feature film, Killing God, anything other than a really funny comedy, set within the edges of the horror genre.
A simple story about a perfectly cosy New Year’s Eve family dinner in a country house in the Spanish mountain region gets twisted into mayhem by existing family tensions, and an uninvited guest. It doesn’t help that they are the worst people on the face of the Earth. After a short opening scene teasing the bigger conflicts of the film, we jump straight to the laughs, as Carlos (Eduardo Antuña) argues with his wife Ana (Itziar Castro in a breakout role) about the flirty content of a text message from her boss. The two other dinner guests are Carlos’ younger brother Santi (David Pareja), a man struggling with a previous suicide attempt, and his long-time girlfriend leaving, and his father Eduardo (Boris Ruiz, Julias Eyes) could drop dead any second of a heart condition, but still drinks and hires prostitutes like there’s – literally – no tomorrow.
Pintó and Casas are clearly inspired by the dark horror comedy of cult director Álex de la Iglesia and his irreverent yet honest portrayals of the European middle class and his witty dialogues, especially in The Day of the Beast. Every line cuts like a razor, and its lightning-fast deliveries remind of Airplane! In that, there is hardly a moment to rest before the next joke lands. Antuña especially plays like a real-life version of the Homer Simpson of recent seasons, as he personifies sexism, racism, and lack of self-awareness to a point where he both delivers and is the target of most jokes with an intense gravitas. Castro gets a bit more playground, as she effortlessly goes from highly comedic to tragically dramatic in an instant.
As if the most awkward of family dinners wasn’t enough, the tensions ramp up once an uninvited guest shows up. Who would enter a country house in the middle of nowhere but a homeless midget claiming to be God? Emilio Gavira plays the Almighty as an alcoholic monster who shouts as often as he drinks, a deity sick of his creation who gives the family an ultimatum. When the daylight of New Years Day comes, he will wipe every last man, woman, and child. All of humanity will cease to exist – except for two people, to be chosen by our four protagonists.
The film’s direction, as well as its production designs, are quite impressive. The blocking of each scene compliments the story, with extreme close-ups used frequently to show the characters’ reactions to the ridiculousness of what’s happening. The house itself, while a bit underused, looks fantastic and perfectly sets the tone of the film from the first time we see its strange décor. Mounted heads everywhere, a few holiday lights to remind you of the festivities adorn the collection of crucifixes and a big painting of a woman holding a severed head on her hand. Miquel Prohens’s cinematography exploits the house to capture the tension and entrapment our characters feel, and also make the gore stand out once the film switches gears and fulfills the promise of its title.
While the jokes come at you fast, the film itself has a slow pace. It takes roughly 30 minutes before God shows up, and the “killing God” part comes about 20 minutes before the film ends. Most of the second and third acts are devoted to the family making stupid arguments for whom should be saved from the impending apocalypse. While the dialogue never loses its sharpness, the film tries too hard to have something to say about humanity, which is never as fun as when it just focuses on how horrible the main characters are.
Beyond the jokes, Killing God also has an ace up its sleeve in the form of an explosive third act that goes full Álex de la Iglesia, with slapstick and gory bits that are as surreal as the idea of a homeless God asking you to choose the new Adam and Eve, and a few bold twists that culminate in one of the bleakest endings for a comedy in years.
