Frightfest Glasgow 2024: ‘Kill Your Lover’ Review
Stars: Paige Gilmour, Shane Quigley Murphy, May Kelly | Written and Directed by Alix Austin, Keir Siewert
Dakota has had enough of her toxic relationship with Axel, but the feeling isn’t mutual. As she tries to end things, Axel becomes something different, something monstrous. He gradually succumbs to the poison of the decaying relationship, becoming a creature with increased aggression, a touch that melts skin and, worst of all, he’s contagious.
Brit horror Kill Your Lover is, at its core, a heavy-handed allegory/visual metaphor for a toxic relationship and a hard break up; all wrapped up in what is a grisly body horror which helps cover what is essentially a short story, spun out to feature length by drawn out fights between the warring couple.
Kill Your Lover is held together by its two central characters, Dakota and Axel, played by Paige Gilmour and Shane Quigley Murphy respectively, who carry the film on their shoulders in what is essentially a two-person story set in a flat (with scream queen May Kelly appearing in some scenes as Dakota’s best friend Rose).
The film cuts back and forth between the present, where their relationship is breaking down and the past, where the duo are madly in love with each other. In the flashbacks it really does feel like Gilmour and Murphy have some serious chemistry and the dichotomy between those scenes set when the relationship was burgeoning and those set now, when it’s breaking down, is visible in the performances – both become standoffish to one another, the tenderness of touch replaced by looks of scorn and disgust.
Speaking of disgust, the effects work in Kill Your Lover is the true highlight. There’s a real “ickiness” to the effects, which mixes Venom-esque black veins with slimy gel and chemical-like burns that look as painful as they are supposed to feel. It harkens back to the slimy effects of Cronenberg and there are a couple of points at which the film really goes for the gore – one of which has a remarkable shock factor. The downside of those effects? Using the aforementioned black veins as a visual metaphor for HiS toxicity coming to the fore was a bit too on the nose…
**½ 2.5/5
Kill Your Lover screened on Friday, March 8th as part of this year’s Pigeon Shrine Glasgow Frightfest.
