If one recently saw Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, which featured Satanic cult members out to murder a young woman who was trying to protect her sister, and wanted to theoretically see more of the same, they could watch They Will Kill You, which features… Satanic cult members out to murder a young woman who is trying to protect her sister. Yes, the timing’s unfortunate, but them’s the breaks as far as twin films go, always racing to see who will come out on top — or just out in theaters first. While Ready or Not 2 is a sequel to 2019’s Ready or Not, They Will Kill You is the brainchild of Russian filmmaker Kirill Sokolov, based on a screenplay by Sokolov and Alex Litvak. Sokolov made a splash — often quite literally within its frames — with 2018’s Why Don’t You Just Die!, a bald-faced exercise in gloriously excessive violence. Leaving no vein or artery in the human body untapped, Sokolov’s debut sought to squeeze out as much crimson bodily fluids onscreen as he could within a single setting, hoping to please gorehounds and genre enthusiasts alike. With They Will Kill You, he expands his scope to a labyrinthian high-rise, drawing direct inspiration from modern classics like The Raid. But while They Will Kill You certainly has no problem getting violent, and despite benefitting from a committed lead turn by Zazie Beetz, the excitement only arrives intermittingly, with some of its more outré elements too often sidelined in favor of momentum-torpedoing exposition and flashbacks that inhibit access to the good stuff.
Beetz plays Asia, a headstrong young woman who never met a challenge she couldn’t fight her way out of. An extended opening sequence sees her attempting to flee with younger sister Maria (Myha’la), hoping to escape the clutches of their abusive father, with Asia forced to put a bullet in the horrible man. One decade and a prison sentence later, Asia finds herself newly employed as a maid at The Virgil, a New York high-rise managed by Lilith (Patricia Arquette, sporting a questionable Irish accent). A residence for extremely wealthy clientele, which includes socialites Sharon (Heather Graham) and Kevin (Tom Felton), Asia is quickly introduced to Virgil operations, and in the process befriends sympathetic janitor Ray (Paterson Joseph). But after tucking in for the evening, Asia’s slumber is disturbed by robe-cloaked cultists, who have conned the poor gal with gainful employment as a means of using her for their next blood sacrifice. Trouble is, Asia has no problem fighting back, and after learning that Maria is also imprisoned within The Virgil’s walls, Asia will battle wave after wave of cultists to get the both of them out alive.
Credit where credit is due: Sokolov knows the games and wastes no time getting to the bloody action. The initial assault on Asia’s bedroom arrives fast and furious, as limbs are severed, bodies are shotgunned across rooms, and broken furniture becomes makeshift melee weapons. Some ropey effects aside — severed heads look pretty awful throughout the film — it’s a brutally fun sequence, and Sokolov is savvy enough to shoot everything in a wide angle, playing the combat out with all players in full frame and in largely unbroken takes. Once the first stage is complete, Sokolov introduces a supernatural element to the proceedings that won’t dare be spoiled here, lest any of the film’s potential fun be ruined, but suffice to say that it provides Asia with a brand new world of challenges to face.
And then Sokolov keeps going. As They Will Kill You progresses, camerawork increasingly becomes more adrenalized alongside the action, swooping, canting, and dolly-zooming with abandon, while the soundtrack is infused with hip hop hits from other media (a track from Afro Samurai is utilized at one point). Sokolov’s aim is clearly to keep things exciting across the entirety of the film’s runtime, but in execution the effect is too knowing by half and becomes tiresome in a way that prevents any shot-in-the-arm thrill — in truth and in sum, it comes across more like Quentin Tarantino directing a video game adaptation of a kill-’em-all side-scroller. And none of this is helped by a screenplay that is haphazardly structured: rather than commit to an escalating series of confrontations, the action frequently flashes back to the past lives of Asia and Maria, helping to provide some measure of personal history that is not really needed with this sort of material. The Satanic cult angle is also poorly fleshed out, limiting much of the action to extras in robes, culminating in a climax that should be a proper bugfuck action fest but instead just lies pretty inert on screen by the time we arrive at it. Beetz is a reliable screen presence, but while she acquits herself well with regard to the demands of the film’s action, her dialogue leaves much to be desired, another screenplay deficit that doesn’t do a lot more than saddling her with various exclamations of four-letter words. It’s clear that Sokolov is striving with They Will Kill You to deliver the ultimate midnight movie crowd-pleaser, but in endeavoring to paint a portrait of “fun” on the screen, forgets to have any actual fun in the process.
DIRECTOR: Kirill Sokolov; CAST: Zazie Beetz, Myha’la, Paterson Joseph, Patricia Arquette, Tom Felton; DISTRIBUTOR: Warner Bros. Pictures; IN THEATERS: March 27; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 34 min.
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