OVERVIEW
In They Will Kill You, Zazie Beetz plays Asia Reaves, an ex-convict who takes a housekeeping job at The Virgil, a luxury Manhattan high-rise, under a false identity to find her missing sister. Once inside, she discovers the building is home to a cult of ultra-wealthy tenants with a dark secret, one that makes them very, very hard to kill. Directed by Kirill Sokolov and co-written with Alex Litvak, the film is splatstick action-horror in the vein of Kill Bill and The Raid, with a premise not too far off Ready or Not.
BACKGROUND
The film is based on a real experience Sokolov had with his wife in Russia. They rented an apartment in a strange building occupied almost entirely by elderly women, and one day discovered a hole behind the kitchen cabinet that connected to another unit. The two began imagining a scenario in which they were living in a building run by a bloodthirsty cult. Sokolov later was inspired to turn the fantasy into the hook for a film after rewatching Rosemary’s Baby, but with a twist he developed with co-writer Alex Litvak: what if the female protagonist being watched is actually the most dangerous person in the room. They Will Kill You is his English-language debut after a successful run of Russian films, and he has cited Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead, Sergio Leone, Park Chan-wook, anime, and Hong Kong action cinema as key influences. He also insisted on practical effects throughout, including real fire for a key sequence, which required a custom fireproof wig to protect Beetz’s actual hair.
THE REVIEW
Despite Sokolov’s insistence throughout the press run that the film is not campy, there is simply no other way to watch it. From its opening minutes, They Will Kill You announces itself with rapid smash zooms, chapter titles, needle drops, and editing rhythms that wear Kill Bill on their sleeve. When the action starts, the martial arts influences are just as visible, and so is the director’s desire to turn the whole thing into an exercise in pure style. The problem is that it never stops feeling exactly like that: someone trying very, very hard to sound like other films without bringing much of their own voice to the conversation.
Some scenes work better than others, and the best is the first fight, where we discover that Asia Reaves is considerably more than capable of defending herself. For five genuinely fun and intense minutes, the film throws explosions, machetes, and mattresses at the wall, and most of it sticks. Even here, though, there is nothing we have not seen before. Beetz executes the choreography with real commitment, but the action lacks impact. Limb cuts and gunshots do not quite land, sometimes due to the sound design, sometimes simply in how they are framed. The remaining action sequences never come close to matching that opening, which is a real problem, and the film becomes increasingly repetitive and uninteresting as a result.
For every small idea that lands, like the way the film’s own title is revealed, or the moment the building’s secret is finally revealed, there are too many moments that feel embarrassingly recycled: corridor lights going out one by one, a character trapped in a narrow space while someone with a machete searches for them through the walls (a trick the film repeats twice). The most unintentionally funny moment comes when a new chapter title promises Maria’s backstory, only for the chapter to close three minutes later having revealed nothing that a single line of dialogue could not have handled. The film comes back to it, yes. It is still funny.
The relationship between the two sisters works moderately well, carried almost entirely by Beetz, whose performance genuinely deserves a better film around it. The antagonists, on the other hand, are largely flat and unthreatening. Patricia Arquette delivers another broad, overdone performance, more exaggerated here than even her work in Severance, and the film never quite recovers every time she is on screen.
FINAL THOUGHTS
They Will Kill You is the kind of film that is easy to root for in theory, and some of its swings connect. Beetz is a genuine screen presence, the first fight is a blast, and the film has more personality than most of what the studio system produces at this price point. But personality without control is just noise. Sokolov is clearly a filmmaker with a vision, but when the influences recede and the film has to stand on its own, there is not quite enough there. Still, a style exercise that at least tries, and has an identity, however derivative, beats the thoroughly sauceless Ready or Not 2 any day.