Because I saw Killer Joe the day after I saw Mad Dog and Glory, I think that it is a masterpiece for being emotionally raw and honest to its subject matter albeit not a movie that I would recommend because of its brutality. I may not be summarizing this correctly (Kristin Bat Signal), but an art theorist said that all art can fall into one of four categories: pre or post fall, apocalyptic or paradise. Killer Joe falls solidly into post fall. The only nature provided is a dog on a chain barking incessantly through a storm and a black cat strolling the alleys of the trailer parks or referenced as briefly idyllic until inevitably destroyed. Nudity isn’t glamorous, beautiful or air brushed, but stark, abrupt and crude. The family unit is beyond corrupted-it is irretrievably broken, exploitive and self-destructive. The best part of this family is not untouched literally or metaphorically by this corruption, but in a small way, encourages its further destruction. When an even more destructive and effective force is introduced into the family, the family follows its worst impulses: instead of protecting the weak, the weak is offered as a commodity and treated as an object instead of a person. I was a bit appalled to find some reviewers characterize this moment as a seduction. SPOILER ALERT

I don’t care if the hot and seductive Matthew McConaughey is the one doing the deed, if a mentally disabled girl is left alone with a contact killer as a “retainer,” and her family knows that she knows nothing about sex, it is rape. Indeed the movie unflinchingly shows the complexity of the situation. McConaughey is appealing: he is the most attractive, smartest and socially adept character in the film. And he is a predator and is capable of outwitting and being able to physically dominate everyone in the film. As an audience member, you are supposed to feel conflicted-McConaughey, the former romcom icon as the titular character, is supposed to be simultaneously attractive and repellent. The reviewers as viewers try to get more comfortable than the filmmakers intend by constantly recharacterizing scenes of sexual violence as comedy or proper payback, particularly in an oral sex rape scene. Just because someone tried to financially rip you off or cheated on someone that you were working for does not mean that you have the right to sexually humiliate this person and force this person to virtually perform fellatio on you. The most crude, unflappable and unashamed character is reduced to a shambling mess by the end. I find the reviewers more appalling than the filmmakers who get it right as implied by the ambiguous ending. Everyone deserves to die, but will they? What is the right result for this person? Eggs can’t be unscrambled.