Bloody They Will Kill You is a Satanic Fight to the Death
Ten years after an unsuccessful attempt to escape from their abusive father while clutching the hand of her scared little sister went tragically awry, Asia Reaves (Zazie Beetz) has taken a housekeeping position in the posh New York City apartment complex The Virgil under false pretenses. What she does not know, however, is that residents and staff in this high-rise have a secret of their own, and it’s one that, if she’s not careful, will see her sacrificed to Satan long before a new day dawns.
From the delightfully messed-up minds of cowriter-director Kirill Sokolov (Why Don’t You Just Die!) and cowriter Alex Litvak (Predators) comes the high-octane, comically bloody kill-or-be-killed extravaganza They Will Kill You. It is the story of a young woman who has spent time behind bars learning how to become proficient at handling herself in a scrape and a building full of immortal Satanists determined to put those skills to the test. Think of it all as if it were The Raid, Prince of Darkness, Ready or Not, Kill Bill, The Bride with White Hair, You’re Next, and From Dusk Till Dawn all rolled into a tidy, 94-minute blood-soaked container.
All of this is mostly a good thing, emphasis on “mostly.” The prologue featuring our plucky heroine making a terrible mistake that leads to her incarceration and separation from her sister is on the lumpy side. It’s clear Sokolov has watched Grindhouse and its imitators more than once. While he picked up a few narrative tricks and honed in on a quirkily retro visual aesthetic that’s rather pleasing, it’s equally clear he learned a handful of the wrong storytelling lessons. There is a smugness to this opening that didn’t work for me, and it’s a trait that will sadly rear its obnoxious head on multiple occasions going forward.
Happily, there’s far too much to enjoy about Sokolov’s ungainly action-horror yarn to get too angry about the elements that fall flat. Once Asia is shown to her quarters by The Virgil’s superintendent Lilith (Patricia Arquette) and her husband Ray (Paterson Joseph), and after the first cultists break into the room attempting to subdue her for sacrifice, things blissfully go off the rails with acrobatic aplomb. The director and his inventive fight choreography team stage one insane face-off after another. Through it all, Asia is dumbfounded by how many times she has to “kill” the same people over and over again. She also becomes far more resolute to complete her mission and be reunited with a certain someone she failed to protect a decade prior.
Sokolov and Litvak utilize a fight-escape-flee-fight again structure. They drop bits of exposition as they go along, both with dialogue between characters in the moment as well as through comic book-inspired flashbacks. These scenes offer hints to how Asia got so good at inflicting damage upon others and add insights into The Virgil’s sordid history. Initially, this works rather well. Later on, however, as Asia keeps climbing up the apartment complex to its penthouse floor-by-floor, these brief interludes grow tiresome.
This is particularly true as it pertains to the revelation as to what Asia is doing at the building and who it is she’s there to see. Sokolov and Litvak explain things rather well at first. Unfortunately, they repeatedly go to the same well far too many times. New twists pop up, not because they’re necessary or — heaven forbid — genuinely reveal authentic insights into the main characters, but more because the filmmakers don’t entirely trust the audience to put the pieces of this puzzle together for themselves.
The good news is that, starting with a rousing ballroom battle between Asia wielding a flaming axe and a seemingly never-ending cadre of black cloak clad assailants, and continuing through a final confrontation in a dilapidated penthouse temple (that centers on a stellar vocal performance and a sentient CGI-practical makeup effects hybrid sensation I won’t spoil; just know it’s awesome), the last third of the film knocked me out. Beetz, terrific throughout, shines during this sequence, while a perfectly cast Arquette is her adversarial doppelgänger, crooked smile and cocksure confidence all. While it’s never in doubt that the two will come to blows, the wait to see them finally get down to it and start trying to hack one another to bits was more than worth it.
There are other fun bits, including one where Sokolov channels his inner Peter Jackson or Sam Raimi and concerns a sentient eyeball tracking Asia as she travels within The Virgil’s dilapidated crawlspaces. The talented ensemble of Satanists trying to hunt her down is also impressive; many of the actors getting far more to do than I expected would be the case at the start of the picture. Heather Graham and Tom Felton are particularly memorable as the chief antagonists going after Asia, the pair getting increasingly agitated with their prey after she dismembers them (multiple times) and then have to let their bodies painfully regenerate.
They Will Kill You isn’t without its issues, but it still manages to slay the majority of them with a crooked smile, a windmill kick to the head, and a swift meat cleaver thrust to the side of the neck. The second “fight your way through Satanists and survive until dawn” with a slight helping of “rich people suck and are the enemy” energy in as many weeks, there’s plenty about Sokolov’s latest that makes it worthy of a watch. With Beetz stealing the show and a flurry of brutal action sequences that had me giggling in contented happiness, this epic fight for survival is worth sticking with all the way through until the final round.
Film Rating: 3 (out of 4)
