Kill Craft (2024) right off the bat throws the audience in the action where a hitman Thomas Delon (portrayed by Michael Paré) is on one of his sniper missions which are about to get hot and heavy. As it turns out, his being a professional killer has its advantages and he is armed to the teeth. Once the barrage starts (and some graphic displays of blood and guts, as expected do happen), while he has the upper hand at first, during the melee of the battle, he sustains a gun wound in the leg. All things considered, he survives the ordeal and goes back home to his family, battered but very much alive.
At home waits his sixteen year old daughter Marina (Sanae Loutsis) who looks after his incapacitated spouse Ruth (Amy DiLorenzo). Because of his profession, he is an absent husband which has created a rift between them and makes Ruth resent him. Thomas is a schemer who is more tightly tethered to his daughter Marina. He has a cherubic side because she fosters an assortment of pets with her closest mate Freya (Isis Eggleston). After the death of Tomas at the scene, not only Marina has to conceal his death from her mother but also all her mother’s medical expenses and furthermore household bills have to be fulfilled by her from doing all the incomplete tasks by Tomas. Why the film is named this way alludes all readers why she has to take her father’s pseudonym craft of murder in the quickest possible time frame.
Mark Savage is known for his integration of dry humor and surrealistic features into a storyline. Speaking of Kill Craft, it is similar to The Professional and Kite (1998) in terms of a story concerning an adolescent girl assassin who has lost her charm through her ordeal as an assassin. Characters however tend to lose Erick’s focus as he goes for the wizardry and fantasies around. Savage emphasizes on applauding exposition with unusual actors and oddball props. Bill Oberst Jr. is cast as Poe, a character who last appeared in Savage’s Painkiller and works for a local crime boss. Scantilly dressed in a dirty brown suit, Poe does not luxuriate at showering, making it relatively easier for his boss to engage him, while submerged in a swimming pool. Bill portrays his character fully embracing the over-the-top and outrageous look of an antagonist perfectly. Furthermore, he hangs out with his lady who is a soured contortionist who does crazy things with her body and returns during the final shootout in typical scary ass backward doll fashion creepy from the Exorcist (1973).
Michael Paré’s characterization is rather steely and matures in the first half of the movie which presents a new shift as the story progresses towards crude humor and hints of horror towards the last third.
After Marina goes into the role of a hitman, the pacing does seem a bit too swift. It would have been great to see her character developed some more a little more and see how she deals with the actual killing of people since her compassion toward animals is evident and she values their lives and deaths equally. This too while she has an apparently unresolved conflict with her mother too, and the narrative closes with nothing memorable.
Kill Craft is an enjoyable nostalgia piece that harkens back to the numerous straight to VHS action flicks that cluttered the video rental shops during the 90s.
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