THEY WILL KILL YOU (2026)

Streaming on HBO MAX from New Line Cinema
Directed by Kirill Sokolov.
Written by Kirill Sokolov, Alex Litvak.
Check out the trailer here!

Asia Reeves (Zazie Beetz) answers an ad for a housekeeper at a posh downtown hotel called the Virgil and finds that the hotel is run by a mysterious cult. But unbeknownst to the cult, run by the stern Ms. Woodhouse (Patricia Arquette), Asia has an ulterior motive to get into the hotel and not even Satan worshipping cultists will get in the way between Asia and her goal.

THEY WILL KILL YOU is if you made a video game out of ROSEMARY’S BABY. It’s a film with simple goals, as each floor of the Virgil represents a circle of hell from Dante’s Inferno. So Asia must make it through each floor in order to fight the big boss at the end of the film, which happens to be, and this will be my only spoiler for this film because I think it is so frukkin cool, a talking pig head on a stick possessed by the embodiment of Satan. So, yeah, subtlety ain’t in this film’s wheelhouse.

THEY WILL KILL YOU just happened to come out right around the same time as READY OR NOT 2: HERE I COME, which also featured a bunch of elitists who worship Satan chasing after a strong female lead. But while READY OR NOT 2: HERE I COME sort of kept the film grounded until the final act, THEY WILL KILL YOU goes gonzo from the get-go. The fight scenes in THEY WILL KILL YOU are next level. Asia, who spent a decade in prison fighting for her life every day, is no Samara Weaving. Now, I love me some Samara, and she’s great in the READY OR NOT series as well as anything else she appears in, but the out-of-this-world fight choreography accomplished by Zazie Beetz in THEY WILL KILL YOU makes Weaving’s fights in READY OR NOT 1 and 2 feel like pillow fights in comparison.

There’s just a bawdy, devil-may-care attitude to THEY WILL KILL YOU that is infectious from scene one. It’s funny, but the gallows’ style humor we all know and love –the fun doesn’t come from one liners or quips (OK, there might be a couple of those, though). The laughs come from the insane action and even more certifiably nuts gore happening as a result of Asia’s rampage through the hotel. It helps that killing the cultists is harder than one might think due to a deal with the devil. It makes it a blast to see heads exploding and then growing back or arms being lopped off, only to have them reattach. It’s comic booky. It’s ludicrous. But that’s what this movie is all about.

Zazie Beetz proves herself to be a Bonafide action star here. Yes, she’s easy on the eyes, especially prancing around in her unmentionables, but she also keeps the pace kinetic and rapid by basically fighting and fighting and fighting from beginning to end in THEY WILL KILL YOU. She also is really good dramatically. Though I know this movie didn’t burn down the box office, I’m hoping people will see Beetz do it all now that the film is available to a home viewing audience. We need this type of female action star who looks the part of an asskicker and has the moves to back it up.

And it’s great seeing all the other players as the mad cultists. Patricia Arquette was hard to recognize at first, as it’s been quite a while since I’ve seen her, but she’s commanding as Ms. Woodhouse, who runs the show at the Virgil. Heather Graham really lets her savage side loose as one of the crazier cultists who keeps getting blown to bits by Asia, only to regenerate with more vengeance in her eyes. HARRY POTTER’s Malfoy Tom Felton shows up as another wise-assed cultist. This film also piles on the recognizable faces with Paterson Joseph, Angus Sampson, and James Remar as the voice of the Satan Pig head.

But it was the whacked-out ending that really sold THEY WILL KILL YOU for me. The final boss match against the severed head of a giant pig simply must be seen to be believed. It makes for a climax that you’ve never, ever seen before. I tell you, the fight scenes, all of them, all try to do things that you haven’t experienced, which is more than I can say for most repetitious action films.

THEY WILL KILL YOU isn’t the deepest of films, but it does make for a rowdy and in-your-face kind of action film with tons of gore effects and one hell of an ending. If not a sequel, I’d love to see Beetz and filmmaker Kirill Sokolov, who did the unforgettable WHY WON’T YOU JUST DIE! a few years back. He has a unique sense of destructive and bloody action and I can’t wait to see where this filmmaker and Beetz go from here!