They Will Kill You is the kind of film that works perfectly fine for a casual watch, especially if you are fan of a slasher genre, observes Mayur Sanap.
Key Points
- They Will Kill You is a slasher film starring Deadpool 2 actor Zazie Beetz.
- Directed and written by Kirill Sokolov, the film follows a young woman trapped in deadly game of survival.
- Barring a few stylistic choices in its action choreography, the film leans heavily on familiar genre tropes.
As a slasher thriller, there's a zany energy to They Will Kill You. Or at least, that's the impression it initially has.
It plays out like a film that knows exactly what kind of experience it wants to deliver. It introduces its characters with sense of mystery about them, sets up the unease of its gore-heavy plot, and looks confident in the way it handles shock value with a touch of screwball comedy.
What They will Kill You Is About
The story follows Asia Reaves, a seemingly docile woman, played by Zazie Beetz whom you might remember from Deadpool 2.
She arrives at a towering high-rise to work as a housekeeper.
What appears ordinary at first soon reveals itself as something far sinister. Asia begins to sense that something is deeply wrong within the building's walls.
The setup initially plays out like the Sydney Sweeney-starrer The Housemaid, with its premise of a woman from an ambiguous past entering a murky domestic space. But while that film presents psychological tension between its characters, They Will Kill You dives headfirst into chaos with its high-stakes survival game.
As Asia digs deeper, she discovers the building is not merely secretive, it's home to a satanic cult led by the deceptively charming superintendent Lilith (played by Patricia Arquette).
What follows is a frantic game of survival, with Asia forced to outwit the devilish people around her.
There's an undeniable fun in watching seasoned actors embrace such delirious material. Patricia Arquette seems to relish her oddball role!
The film leans into a screwball, almost darkly comic tone, with exaggerated violence and bloodshed. Various body parts are chopped off, heads are smashed, and there's relentless blood spattering. But this manic energy can only carry the film so far.
They Will Kill You isn't impactful
Director Kirill Sokolov, who co-wrote the script with Alex Litvak, peppers the narrative with some enjoyable gags, but over time, these begin to feel like distractions from a script that doesn't fully hold together.
The set up sounds clunky, and it kind of is. Barring a few stylistic choices in its action choreography, the film leans heavily on familiar genre tropes.
It evokes strong memories of Ready Or Not, another slasher-in-a-mansion thriller centered on a protagonist trapped by a secretive group.
While They Will Kill You plays things more straightforwardly, it lacks the same bite of that film. The tension is there, but it's never quite as sharp as it could be. By the time the freakish ritual by the cult is unveiled, it comes off rather illogical and unintentionally funny.
The main problem is that the protagonist here isn’t strong enough on paper.
Zazie does much of the heavy lifting in her role of femme fatale, but Asia's character isn't developed well enough to make us root for her. The stakes are clear, but you don't feel invested enough.
Supporting performances from Patricia Arquette and Tom Felton add some personality to the mix, though their characters are more functional than fully fleshed out.
Still, They Will Kill You is the kind of film that works perfectly fine for a casual watch, especially if you are fan of slasher genre. There's just enough suspense and action to justify its brisk runtime. It's all fun while it lasts, and then immediately forgettable after that.
They Will Kill You Review Rediff Rating:
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