They Will Kill You
Blood and gore are the staple ingredients of Warner Bros’ noisy and meaningless splatter fest.
Mortal meat: Zazie Beetz
Courtesy of Warner Bros.
by JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
There is no official metric to quantify the goriest film ever made. Nonetheless, the horror market is drenched in bloody contenders. Kirill Sokolov’s They Will Kill You is an admirable showcase for the prosthetics and makeup department, but sometimes gore can be a case of less. Zazie Beetz plays Asia Reaves who, in the film’s prologue, shoots her abusive father in the chest before escaping into a dark and rainy night. Ten years later it is still raining and Asia turns up at the front door of a Manhattan high-rise, ready to start work there as a maid. She is met by a stern, middle-aged woman, Lily Woodhouse (Patricia Arquette with a woeful Irish accent), who questions her as she stands coatless in the downpour. For such an up-market building, apparently occupied by the New York elite, it seems odd that there is no porch, let alone an awning. But Lily lets Asia stand there, as she gets damper by the second, before inviting her in.
Things start getting pretty lively pretty soon when Asia is shown to her chamber, a massive bedroom with dark red furnishings, something that wouldn’t be out of place in the Overlook Hotel in The Shining. She hasn’t been asleep long, when masked figures in black cloaks descend on her with the express intention of her expiration. But Asia can look after herself and quickly incapacitates her assailants, although the latter manage to rapidly reassemble their missing bits as they happen to be immortal and are in cahoots with the Devil. In fact, the building is a temple to Satan and the rent is one human sacrifice a month…
It’s not easy to establish how all this is to be taken, although with the introduction of an itinerant eyeball and its optic nerve, the aim is obviously high comedy. But the art of true humour is surprise and They Will Kill You is little more than as series of outrageously bloody and camp set pieces, like a grisly companion piece to the John Wick films. It pretty soon gets unutterably tedious, as geysers of arterial blood, deafening sound effects and industrial synth on the soundtrack batter the senses. Somebody like Quentin Tarantino could have given the material some visual wit, but unfortunately Kirill Sokolov is not our man. Of course, nothing makes sense, either logically or biologically, although one can but admire the stamina of Ms Beetz (Sophie Dumond in Joker), whose character fights on in spite of being repeatedly stabbed in the back, belly and elsewhere. What a girl.
Cast: Zazie Beetz, Myha’la, Paterson Joseph, Tom Felton, Heather Graham, Patricia Arquette, Willie Ludik, David Viviers, Armando Rivera, and the voice of James Remar.
Dir Kirill Sokolov, Pro Andy Muschietti, Barbara Muschietti and Dan Kagan, Screenplay Kirill Sokolov and Alex Litvak, Ph Isaac Bauman, Pro Des Jeremy Reed, Ed Luke Doolan, Music Carlos Rafael Rivera, Costumes Neal McClean, Sound Jeffrey A. Pitts, Dialect coach Claire Berlein.
New Line Cinema/Nocturna-Warner Bros.
94 mins. USA/South Africa. 2026. UK and US Rel: 27 March 2026. Cert. 15.
