Review: They Will Kill You

Director:  Kirill Sokolov

Stars:  Zazie Beetz, Paterson Joseph, Heather Graham

The twin film phenomenon – as discussed by Lauren Rosewarne in her recent book of the same name – concerns the recurring uncanny coincidence of multiple films with the same or similar subject appearing in swift succession. This time two years ago, for instance, we were gifted Immaculate and The First Omen within weeks of one another, both religious horrors concerning novitiates impregnated against their will for demonic purposes. This year we’re still in satanic territory, using action horror as a vehicle for combatting the inequities of the wealth as They Will Kill You arrives within a week of Ready or Not 2: Here I Come.

They Will Kill You marks Russian director Kirill Sokolov’s first feature for a western studio, something that feels wryly amusing when watching his movie burn an infernal capitalist system down with such wanton glee. Much like in the Ready or Not films, the action is confined to one location. Instead of roaming across the grounds of a country estate, however, we sprawl vertically, up the floors of a New York residence for the rich, powerful and wantonly sinful called The Virgil. Our heroine Asia Reaves (Zazie Beetz) arrives for a job as a maid in the pouring rain, using an assumed name for reasons that will become clear later. The imposing architecture, the downpour and Patricia Arquette’s stern and stilted madam Lily Woodhouse all strongly recall the opening of Dario Argento’s Suspiria. Even the interior lobby has something of the same inclination toward elaborate decor.

It soon transpires, of course, that Asia is prey for the residents of The Virgil, an intended sacrifice to Satan that must be made that very night so that their lives of luxury may continue. Locked into the fortress, Asia rapidly realises she has to fend for herself. Fortunately, a stint in prison has gifted her some cartoonishly savvy fighting skills, an excuse for Sokolov and co-writer Alex Litvak to put her through a series of manic, blood-soaked fight sequences as Asia pursues her real reason for being there… her estranged sister Maria (Myha’la). Ready or not, here it comes.

While the similarities to the new Radio Silence movie are, frankly, uncanny, Sokolov draws from a range of clear influences for his gooey and inventive fracas. Video games, clearly, but also the likes of The Raid, Battle Royale, Oldboy and – rather inelegantly – Tarantino, particularly the Kill Bill saga. It’s there not just in the formal depiction of the fight sequences – which display fantastic energy, either whipping around the subjects or observing them like a side-scrolling beat ’em up – but in the line deliveries, particularly from Beetz, who has a habit of copying the very cadences of Uma Thurman’s Bride. In the ’90s such borrowing from QT presented as awkward fanboying. In the 2020s it’s just a bit embarassing. The film – and Beetz – is always better when it manages to shrug this tendency to the side.

Fortunately They Will Kill You has bags of its own ingenuity and identity in spite of so many influences fluttering about it’s coattails. Sokolov brings a kinetic abandon to proceedings. The film is always surging forward, even when it dallies for some sparsely peppered flashbacks to flesh out the slimline story. In a twist on the Ready or Not formula, the privileged residents of The Virgil have a rather persistent staying power. Sokolov explores the grossly comic potentials of immortality. A sequence in the building’s intestines that recalls the scampering stop motion of Wes Anderson leads to an exceedingly creative stretch with a sentient, disembodied eye (certainly the best of it’s kind since the wonky Alien Earth TV show). Shortly thereafter an action sequence is mounted in near total darkness, which I was ready to bemoan until Asia and a flaming fire axe gradually brought the geography into glaring clarity.

This is a tight, fast movie, often qualities that are under-appreciated in an era of bloated running times, but some things get short shrift because of this dedication to the pace. Asia has about as much depth as a figure from the character select screen on Streets of Rage. Beetz makes up for this with her gung-ho physicality, but Myha’la has to carry the emotional heavy-lifting (which she succeeds at with aplomb). Arquette, meanwhile, is inexplicably saddled with an Irish accent that she quite clearly isn’t comfortable with. The third act naturally has to up the ante, which it succeeds at mightily, but with a garish final beast that’s as bizarre as it is crass. In these final stages, They Will Kill You comes to feel not so much like Ready or Not‘s punk sister, more it’s bratty, juvenile, nu-metal step-child. It is resplendently, pridefully tasteless (complimentary).

So it’s vulgar, but not unsophisticated. Arquette’s Lily Woodhouse perpetuates the suppression of empathy within the walls of The Virgil. Their practices are ok so long as their sacrifices aren’t seen as people. It’s a blinkered disassociation that chimes with Trump’s repetitious gas-lighting of his own base. The Virgil is a pressure-cooker state, one that invites migrants and minorities in with empty promises of opportunity, then either casts them into servitude or turns on them with violence. They Will Kill You is an extremely cathartic fantasy of burning it all down. And the giddy excitement with which Sokolov lights the torch makes up for the pervasive sense that we’ve played out this dream before.