The Things You Kill

Directed by Alireza Khatami, The Things You Kill follows a university professor (Ekin Koç’s Ali) as he’s forced to confront his father’s abusive history. Filmmaker Khatami, armed with his own screenplay, delivers a disastrously uninvolving (and progressively interminable) drama that strikes all the wrong notes right from the word go, as the movie, which runs a punishing 114 minutes, boasts an often breathtakingly deliberate pace that threatens to put the viewer to sleep on a recurring basis – with the arms-length atmosphere compounded by Khatami’s reliance on head-scratching (and hopelessly lackluster) subplots and digressions. And as intolerable as much of the picture’s opening stretch is, The Things You Kill progresses into an increasingly surreal midsection and second half that’s nothing short of infuriating – which, when coupled with a laughable and thoroughly unsatisfying conclusion, confirms the movie’s place as a complete and total misfire that doesn’t succeed on any level it attempts.

no stars out of ****