‘They Will Kill You’ Review

With its blood-soaked fusion of hyper-stylized action and class warfare thrills, ‘They Will Kill You’ plays like ‘Ready or Not’ by way of ‘Kill Bill’, engaging and juvenile in equal measure as it seems designed specifically for edgy thirteen year olds.

The film opens with a young woman (Zazie Beetz), presenting herself at The Virgil, which bills itself as the most exclusive building in New York. Fresh out of prison, this woman has come seeking work as a maid in the building. She is greeted by the building’s superintendent, Lilith Woodhouse (Patricia Arquette), who gives her the tour of the building and gets her settled in her room.

This Virgil, its guests, and its staff, prove not to be all they seem.

But neither is she.

As the building’s denizens reveal themselves to be a Satanic cult, looking for a human sacrifice, the young woman reveals her own hidden agenda: she has come to the hotel looking for her younger sister, and is willing to do anything to guarantee her safety.

Directed by Kirill Sokolov, ‘They Will Kill You’ is an extremely stylish film, though at times perhaps too stylish, self conscious to look cool above all else. The violence, and oh brother there’s a lot of it, is cartoony and over the top, with blood spraying from open wounds, covering everything and everyone.

That’s not to say there aren’t genuinely creative sequences, such as one in which Zazie Beets finds herself in a crawling chase through the building’s walls, her hunter right on her heels. In moments like these, the camerawork, set design, and characters all come together with a frenetic energy that perfectly captures the film’s difficult tone of action, horror, and absurdity.

Zazie Beetz is a strong and easy to root for protagonist, but sadly the cast of Satanic villains is given barely any character detail, no motivation, no unique traits beyond being evil yet incompetent. Patricia Arquette is arguably the main antagonist, and yet my biggest takeaway from her performance is how wildly all over the place her accent is. Perhaps my ears were struggling, but it was about halfway through the movie before I figured out she was supposed to be Irish.

As the story careens through its hellish cat and mouse game, set entirely during one night, it grows more and more childish, culminating in a third act that wants so badly to be badass but only comes off silly.

While Sokolov clearly has an eye for clever action set pieces, ‘They Will Kill You’ is unfortunately weighed down by an uneven script and underdeveloped characters. Even with these flaws, Sokolov’s film is lean and chaotic, delivering blood splattered fun in spite of its moments of cringe.

They Will Kill You
Rated R for strong bloody violence, gore, language, and brief sexual content/nudity.
Running Time: 1 hour and 34 minutes

Director Kirill Sokolov
Writers Kirill Sokolov, Alex Litvak
Stars Zazie Beetz, Myha’la, Paterson Joseph, Tom Felton, Heather Graham, Patricia Arquette
Rating R
Running Time 94 Minutes
Genres Action, Comedy, Horror