The Things You Kill: A Prodigal Turk Entertains Dreams of Death in this Psychological Thriller

By Liz Braun

Rating: B

Alireza Khatami’s The Things You Kill is a complicated psychological study of a man discovering he contains multitudes.

Ali (Ekin Koç) has a few things on his mind. He has returned to Turkey after 14 years of studying and living in America, and now he’s teaching at a university. His job is not entirely secure.

He and his wife (Hazar Ergüçlü) want children but are struggling with fertility issues, mostly his, as it happens.

Erkan Kolçak Köstendil and Ekin Koç in The Things You Kill

On shaky ground at work and on the home front, Ali is also worried about his aged parents — his father (Ercan Kesal) is an abusive tyrant and his mother is ailing. He speaks to his wife about possibly moving his mother into their house, where he and his wife can watch over her.

Too late, alas. Ali’s mother dies after a fall. The fall is suspicious, and Ali suspects foul play. 

After the death of his mother, Ali tries to escape all the grief and anger by going to a small farm he owns in a remote spot, where he attempts a bit of farming. There, a stranger approaches and asks him for work. The man, Reza (Erkan Kolçak Köstendil), says he can tend Ali’s land and, with more water, improve it a lot.

Initially, Ali and Reza seem to have very little in common. Ali speaks easily and freely with Reza, generally from a position of superiority. He is somewhat condescending, but that changes as he gets to know Reza better. Together, they work out a few nefarious plans — vengeance, violence, bribery and worse — undertakings that may or may not be real. 

You might say the gentle Ali has gone through the looking glass. As the men’s identities merge, The Things You Kill moves into psychological thriller territory, working in the language of magic and of dreams.

The Things You Kill is a challenging movie about the world men inhabit, about patriarchy, about intergenerational trauma and about all the exigencies of “masculinity.” Iranian-Canadian writer/director Alireza Khatami presents a family drama that has rich social and political underpinnings; the film was Canada’s entry for the Oscars this year. 

You will notice that the filmmaker’s name — Alireza — combines Ali and Reza, the names of the movie’s main characters, so perhaps there is some personal soul-searching involved in all this. The movie’s dedication: For my sisters. That’s not really reflected in the storytelling, but never mind.  For us other sisters, the notion of men nobly struggling with the patriarchy is kind of a killing joke. 

Anyway, good movie.

The Things You Kill. Written and directed by Alireza Khatami, starring Ekin Koç, Erkan Kolçak Köstendil, Hazar Ergüçlü, Ercan Kesal. In theatres March 20 in Toronto and Vancouver and opening in other Canadian cities throughout the spring.

Filmmaker Alireza Khatami will participate in a Q&A on Friday, March 20, after the 6:45 pm ET show at TIFF Lightbox.