Killer Joe focuses on gritty storytelling, dark humor, and intense character drama without checking diversity boxes or letting ideology take the wheel. Characters are driven by flaws and personal motivations, not by identity-first writing. There is virtually no evidence of forced representation or narrative bending to accommodate modern wokeness.

The film leans into bleak themes, family dysfunction, crime, and violence, but doesn’t seem interested in undermining faith, tradition, or masculinity for modern ideological points. If anything, it revels in problematic characters and broken relationships rather than preaching woke values.

There’s not much of a soapbox in sight. The film doesn’t villainize traditional views or offer up only one (modern) moral worldview. Everyone is flawed, regardless of their role, it’s nihilism and black humor, not ideological unity.