‘They Will Kill You’: Zazie Beetz Slices Through a New Gang of Elite Satanists 

Alci Rengifo

The ongoing trope right now in horror thrillers, and comedies, is that the rich must literally worship Satan. “They Will Kill You” is the latest blood fest to take on a gang of elites whose wealth derives from the dark one. Zazie Beetz is perfectly cast in the lead role. She has always had the look and presence for an action hero. You can certainly believe it when she starts taking names. All she needs is a better version of this plot. For most of its running time, the movie functions too often like one of those student projects where the director clearly wishes they were Quentin Tarantino. 

Beetz is Asia Reaves, a woman answering a job post for the Virgil, a hotel in New York that looks plucked out of a graphic novel. The place has the lore of being the locale where several missing persons were last seen. Demonic imagery is prominent in the architecture. Lilith (Patricia Arquette), the hotel manager, greets Asia with that all too refined air of someone with secrets to hide in a thriller. Once she gets settled, Asia gets into bed for her first night sleeping in what appears to be her new workplace. Her rest is terribly interrupted by a masked man licking her feet. This is followed by a group of cloaked figures storming into the room and attempting to take Asia captive. They include Sharon (Heather Graham) and Kevin (Tom Felton). It turns out they need to sacrifice Asia to Satan before dawn. Asia has her own secret agenda for coming here as well. She wants to find her missing younger sister, Maria (Myha’la).

For director Kirill Sokolov, “They Will Kill You” functions like a blood-soaked reel. With co-writer Alex Litvak, the aim here is total style over substance. They are channeling multiple influences from ‘70s martial arts flicks to the artsier grindhouse fare of Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. What the latter feature that this movie is missing is a stronger sense of narrative. All there is really to discuss about this film is its flashy shots. Cinematographer Isaac Bauman lights the the Virgil like a comic book come to life while the gory visual effects are cheeky and convincing. The first fight scene is particularly entertaining with Asia slicking and dicing through her attackers, only to watch as their body parts grow back. There is fantastic makeup and effects work in a moment where Sharon’s headless body chases after our hero in a tunnel. Sokolov insists on endless shots of bodies spraying blood like sprinklers, in a clear nod to a visual Tarantino’s “Kill Bill” made famous back in its day.

Describing the movie means repeating these details over and over, since the film never pauses to tell much of a story. Like “Boy Kills World,” it’s just one stylish action scene after another, eventually feeling confined since the plot never leaves the hotel. Brief flashbacks explain how Asia and Maria were separated by bad luck. Yet, there isn’t much else to care about. Tarantino and Rodriguez know how to make the plot engrossing by providing layered backstories about revenge, the fate of worlds, sex, or whatever obsesses them. Sokolov makes the mistake of thinking aesthetic is all that defines a cult work. More could have been done with a good actor like Heather Graham, reduced to just screaming and running. Patricia Arquette is meant to just scowl and do one-liners. Zazie Beetz looks great posing with a blade, but isn’t given dialogue we sense she enjoys bringing to life. The other characters are never given room to become funny or biting satirical representations of the elites the concept is apparently spoofing.

The climax then has promise when Satan semi-appears, first as a monstrous silhouette and then possessing a hanging pig head snarling orders. Spoiler alert, but there is a lapse of logic in the idea that the devil chooses to possess a pig head and is then roundly defeated when that head is set aflame. The recent “Ready or Not 2: Here I Come,” played around with this same idea of a gang of elites needing to kill to satisfy Satan with more joy, satire and visual creativity.  There, the action serves the comedy. “They Will Kill You” instead defines that old accusation of a bad action movie feeling too much like a video game. Initially, it is fun to look at before getting tiresome in its own bloodbath.

“They Will Kill You” releases March 27 in theaters nationwide.