They Will Kill You – Review

Cert – 15, Run-time – 1 hour 34 minutes, Director – Kirill Sokolov

Seeking refuge, Asia (Zazie Beetz) takes a job working in mysterious building The Virgil as a housekeeper. However, the role turns out to be a sacrifice for Satanists who she must fend against.

You can’t exactly accuse They Will Kill You of being a wholly original film. Frequent homages to Kill Bill, and Tarantino styling, can start to border on overkill as they get near to defining the overall style of the film instead of simply being a mad action-horror – before eventually reaching insane in the third act. The plot is kept relatively simple (and familiar) as Zazie Beetz’s Asia, fleeing for her life, takes a job at exclusive members’ club The Virgil as a housekeeper. However, when some of the members (including Heather Graham and Tom Felton) attack her in her room she discovers that she’s actually the latest sacrifice for a group of Satanists.

Cue a series of bloody fight sequences with a good helping of splatter as Asia tries to escape the building and take down those trying to kill her – led by Patricia Arquette’s Lily, owner of an Irish accent fitting of Wild Mountain Thyme with how much it dances around the UK rather than Ireland. Co-writer (alongside Alex Litvak) and director Kirill Sokolov puts most focus on action, dialogue scenes are just quick breathers before the next onslaught of slashes and stabbings. While sometimes the Tarantino style can feel a bit overused there’s an undeniably amusing nature to the pulpiness of the action which is made with pure popcorn entertainment in mind.

The Satanist angle of the antagonists starts to enter the ridiculous the more we see and learn about it. While sometimes it can add to the over-the-top nature of certain sequences it can also at others, especially in the final 20 minutes, it can start to feel a bit much, even if there is still some humour to be found in the you-won’t-see-it-coming finale. Occasionally it can feel as if certain aspects are present to push the run-time just that bit further, largely those that play into the more familiar beats. However, for 90-minutes there’s enough pulp in the scene-to-scene basis of the action to see things through and make for an amusing popcorn actioner.

A popcorn horror-actioner that understands exactly what tone it wants to strike. On occasion it might lean a bit too much into ridiculousness and Tarantino homage, but there’s still a decent 90-minutes of splattery entertainment here.