A look at a director’s dark gifts

The prodigiously talented British director Ben Wheatley makes the kinds of films whose images — much like the skillfully wielded hammer in his nightmarish thriller “Kill List” — have a way of lodging themselves in the brain. But his movies offer far more than a postQuentin Tarantino wallow in nihilistic violence, as the critic Adam Nayman argues smartly and meticulously in his rich new study of the director’s career, “Ben Wheatley: Confusion and Carnage” (Critical Press).

The book’s title phrase, which hints at Wheatley’s considerable skill at dramatizing all manner of bloody chaos, comes from the director’s auspicious debut feature, “Down Terrace.” That 2009 f ilm is astutely analyzed here along with “Kill List,” “Sightseers,” “A Field in England,” “High-Rise” and the still-forthcoming “Free Fire,” which opens April 21 in theaters.

Aidan Monaghan Magnolia Pictures ELISABETH MOSS and Tom Hiddleston star in “High-Rise,” directed by Ben Wheatley, whose career is robustly examined in a new book by Adam Nayman.