In case you missed last week’s big-ticket action-horror picture about a pair of sisters killing their way through an assortment of satanic rich people that premiered at SXSW earlier this month, don’t worry: There’s another big-ticket action-horror picture about a pair of sisters killing their way through an assortment of satanic rich people that premiered at SXSW, hitting screens this weekend. That’s a somewhat glib way to talk about Kirill Sokolov’s They Will Kill You, but the comparisons aren’t exactly a stretch. I’ll give this to Sokolov — while it’s not the English-language debut I would have hoped for from the director of the ribald and wacky Why Don’t You Just Die?!, I’ll take this over a Radio Silence feature any day of the week, and twice on Sundays.
Aesthetically, They Will Kill You is another Wick-core action flick, set in the Virgil, an NYC apartment building that looks like what the Moscow Continental might have looked like during the post-Stalin thaw. Abandon all hope ye hoping for a more subtle reference to the Commedia, but a descent into hell is exactly what Asia Reeves (Zazie Beetz) has signed up for. A tough lady who did a bid for shooting her abusive father in front of her sister (and the cops), she’s here to kick ass, take names, and free the now-grown Maria from old-money bondage. She disguises herself as a new hired hand, and expects to fight her way out, but it’s the way in which her first brawl unfolds that shocks her — she’s assaulted by a group of pig-masked rich folks (Tom Felton and Heather Graham among them) and quickly turns them into ham hocks.
If only it were that simple. Encountering the Virgil’s unworried manager (a bizarrely Irish-accented Patricia Arquette) in the hallway, a bloody-covered Asia realizes that this might not be so easy after all. See, these rich folks made a solid deal with Satan a century or two ago — give him a ripe sacrifice, and they get to live forever. In practice, that means they don’t age and have a Wolverine-like healing factor, so all of that head-exploding and throat-cutting she did was useless. They’re still gonna come after her, and they’re not gonna stop until she’s their latest offering to the Pig-Headed Devil they worship. So, it’s up to her to make her way through the building, find her sister, and try her damnest not to wind up as Sacrificial Soup for the Swine Soul.
Sokolov wears his influences on his sleeve, some of which are more effective than others. The film’s slathered in a Tarantino “grindhouse” butter, with ‘70s-styled intertitles, geyser-like blood-spray, and too many shots of badass posing (often three or four times per sequence), all of which are played-out signifiers of “American genre.” What does work are his Korean-inspired action sequences and Raimi-like comedy, with homages to Park Chan-Wook’s Oldboy and Evil Dead standing out as memorable and well-applied references. The action is clearly shot and cleverly choreographed — a scene in which Beetz takes a literal “fire” axe to a group of the cultists is a particular standout, as well as that bloody first encounter — and the gross-out gags are smart, such as the espionage mission that one of Graham’s eyes goes on following a mind-blowing shotgun blast.
If there’s anything truly frustrating here, it’s the tonal inconsistency — you’d find it hard to believe that the film’s dour, grounded opening has anything to do with the Tex Avery psychotic episode that follows. Sure, it’s surprising, but it doesn’t feel cohesive in the way one might hope. The relationships are paper-thin, and I wish they’d been treated as the kind of window-dressing they are rather than a legitimate locus for misapplied emotion (there’s a not-insignificant chance they were added to “give the film stakes” or whatever). Still, They Will Kill You is a surprisingly good time when it kicks into hyperactive sixth gear, even if the shifter sticks too much to ensure that the ride’s totally smooth.