‘They Will Kill You’ Review – A Batshit Bloody Romp That Should Be A Lot More Fun Than It Actually Is

Ever hear a film fully described to you with appealing comparisons and specifications that sound right up your alley? They Will Kill You is a prime example of the type of film that lives up to only a partial percentage of its potential. It’s a full genre blend of blitzing action, Looney Tunes-like violence, and blood sprays galore, combining the comedic horror of Sam Raimi’s genre pics and iconic badassery of Kill Bill into one.

These elements should make for an absolute bloody blast. They Will Kill You delivers the goods in many moments thanks to Kirill Sokolov’s delightfully wild camera direction in fight scenes. Still, the film’s lack of virtually any substantial narrative or deepening of characters or lore comes back to bite it in the end, leaving you more exhausted than exhilarated with the chaos unfolding on screen.

It helps that Zazie Beetz is fully committed as the film’s bonafide action heroine and gives it her all in every scene, but They Will Kill You runs out of kinetic energy before half of its 94 minute runtime is over; ultimately acting as a fine enough entry point to its gonzo influences but falling short on bringing even more to the table to make it more memorable.

The film opens with Asia Reaves (Beetz) and her sister Maria running away from their abusive father, but, after a scuffle where Asia shoots and almost kills her father, she runs away from the police, having to leave her sister in the process. Ten years later, Asia has taken a job as a maid at a hotel known as The Virgil, where she hopes to finally reunite with her sister, whom she heard was also working as a maid there.

The Virgil’s manager, Lilith (Patricia Arquette) explains the prolific history of the hotel to Asia, and introduces her to other maids and the room she’ll be staying in while in the hotel, but after getting ambushed by a quartet of figures in pig masks in her room, she fights them off through sheer will and discovers the hotel’s true secrets.

The Virgil has had a long history of disappearing residents, and it turns out Lilith leads a satanic cult within the hotel, luring in the poor who see their help wanted signs as a great opportunity, but are really the next to be potentially offered as sacrifice so the cult can keep their wealth and immortality. After reuniting with her naturally much older sister (Myha’la) in the hotel, Asia must battle her way through a cult that she can’t fully kill before they kill her and, potentially, her sister.

It’s a special type of insane irony to have yet another film follow two estranged sisters battling against a rich devil cult so soon after Ready or Not 2, but They Will Kill You at least shakes things up in some respects to keep things from being completely derivative. The immortality aspects of the cult members lead to some delightfully deranged practical effects, where no matter how many limbs and heads Asia cuts off her enemies’ bodies, they always can grow back and function as lost body parts, even if only an eyeball is remaining from a blown-off head.

It certainly adds a more cartoonish factor to the film’s action sequences, only making the fluidity and stylization of Sokolov’s action largely delightful. The camera, at nearly every moment, has a maximalist feel to it, with constant zooms, tracking shots, and even fish-eye lenses used to match the energy of nearly every scene. The stylization of the film’s text on screen and near breakneck pace make the film a birth child of the goopy chaotic silliness of Evil Dead 2 and the pure katana-wielding relentlessness of the Kill Bill films, and Zazie Beetz’s pure action stardom is enough to never make They Will Kill You a truly bad time.

There is a point, however, where you can get to a place where your film’s influences are so clear that you question what the actual identity of the movie itself is, as the film continues to lose any sense of kinetic fun it had when it first began. What makes it particularly frustrating is many of the pieces to make a much more full formed film exist within the story here like the idea of each floor of the hotel having its own unique theming or the furthering of the “eat the rich” themes that are present within spurts of the film’s dialogue but the film blows by all of them making the repetitive nature of the film’s tricks more mundane than enjoyable.

What’s even more disappointing is how the characters and story are barely formed here. Everyone will always be down for the wacky thrills and blood chaos, but when the film asks you to feel for the relationship between these two sisters, especially in the third act, it’s largely empty because we barely know anything about them or virtually any other major characters in the story. It leads to the story and the awesomely creative set pieces surrounding them feeling hastily taped together to at least form a semblance of some functioning narrative, and it comes back to hurt the movie when the thrill of the gonzo fun starts to wear thin.

They Will Kill You has the blood, guts, and weirdness to spare alongside its impressively choreographed fight sequences, and Zazie Beetz giving it her all at every moment. For some, that’ll be enough, but as the film goes on, its lack of any further depth behind its intriguing ideas and inspired vignettes makes it largely tiresome before its credits roll. It’s actually a solid intro piece to touchstones of horror and action prestige it’s inspired by, but the film loses any unique voice within its repetitive structure, making for a largely fine but forgettable experience on the whole.