Cast: Zazie Beetz, Myha’La, Paterson Joseph, Tom Felton, Heather Graham, and Patricia Arquette
Genre: Comedy
Director: Kirill Sokolov
In Irish Cinemas: 27th March 2026
“They Will Kill You” lands squarely in the blood-soaked lane of underdog-versus-elite horror, dressing up a familiar premise with flashes of visual flair and bursts of savage creativity. While it never fully escapes the shadow of films that have already mined this territory, it does enough stylistically to keep things engaging at least on the surface.
The story unfolds almost entirely within a towering, old-world Manhattan apartment block, its ornate Art Deco design recreated with striking detail. Director Kirill Sokolov, making his English-language debut, clearly relishes the confined setting, turning hallways and dining rooms into arenas for elaborate, bone-crunching set pieces. There’s a clear effort to inject the film with thematic weight—fleeting nods to classical literature and moral descent appear here and there, but these ideas feel more like decorative touches than anything deeply explored.
Where the film truly comes alive is in its gleefully excessive action. The violence is both inventive and relentless, often teetering between horror and dark comedy. One standout sequence, staged in near darkness, sees the protagonist fending off a swarm of attackers using a weapon that feels as theatrical as it is brutal. It’s in moments like these that Sokolov’s imagination fully takes over.
At the centre is Asia, played with fierce physicality by Zazie Beetz. Introduced as a newly hired maid, she quickly reveals herself to be something far more dangerous. The building’s wealthy residents, cloaked in secrecy and ritual, intend to offer her up as part of their ongoing pact with dark forces. What they don’t anticipate is that Asia has come prepared, armed not just with weapons but with a personal mission: to find and save her younger sister, who has become entangled in the building’s sinister inner circle.
Asia’s combat skills, honed during her time in prison, turn the tables in spectacular fashion. Yet the film adds a grotesque twist: her enemies are maddeningly difficult to kill. Limbs reattach, wounds heal, and the carnage takes on an almost absurd rhythm, blending horror with a strange, macabre humour.
The supporting cast, including Patricia Arquette as the building’s enigmatic overseer, adds texture but not much depth. Many of the residents function more as targets than fully realised characters, their personalities secondary to the inventive ways they’re dispatched or reassembled.
There are clear stylistic influences at play, from spaghetti western tension to stylised revenge thrillers, visible in the film’s standoffs and kinetic fight choreography. Still, for all its visual ambition and kinetic energy, the film struggles to give its story the same level of care. Emotional stakes are introduced but rarely linger, often swept aside by the next wave of chaos.
In the end, “They Will Kill You” is a visceral, occasionally inspired ride that prioritises spectacle over substance. It may not break new ground, but it knows how to deliver a memorable, blood-drenched show.
Overall: 5/10
Movie Reviewer
