{"id":566253,"date":"2026-03-28T09:28:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-28T09:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/566253\/"},"modified":"2026-03-28T09:28:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T09:28:11","slug":"thin-on-story-but-plenty-of-slapstick-gore-galore-winnipeg-free-press","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/566253\/","title":{"rendered":"Thin on story, but plenty of slapstick, gore galore \u2013 Winnipeg Free Press"},"content":{"rendered":"

A young woman, an exclusive New York apartment building with a dark history, a satanic cult \u2014 this setup might sound familiar to horror aficionados, but Rosemary\u2019s Baby this is not.<\/p>\n

They Will Kill You doesn\u2019t start with a gradual realization that something might be off. It starts by showing us the Virgil \u2014 the cursed apartment in question \u2014 with a glowing red pentagram on the roof and a relief sculpture of a horned, winged Lucifer on the front door.<\/p>\n

Russian filmmaker Kirill Sokolov (also known for the emphatically titled Why Don\u2019t You Just Die!) is a direct kind of guy. There will be arterial blood spray before we hit the 12-minute mark.<\/p>\n

Sokolov, who co-scripts with Alex Litvak, is working the pulpy action-comedy-horror genre, in which the decapitation of a villain can feel both sinister and slapsticky. This tonal balance is tricky to get right: Sam Raimi (Evil Dead) can do it, but Sokolov flails.<\/p>\n

They Will Kill You is too goofy to be scary and too sloppy for consistent comic payoff. It is, however, cheerfully violent and defiantly gross, and star Zazie Beetz (Joker) rules as the blood-drenched, unstoppable heroine Asia.<\/p>\n

Asia arrives at the Virgil on a rain-soaked night, ostensibly answering an ad for a housemaid. The apartment\u2019s ominous superintendent Lilith Woodhouse (Patricia Arquette, with a wandering Irish accent), takes Asia on a little tour, showing her the security system \u2014 everyone is essentially locked in \u2014 and introducing her to some of the building\u2019s tenants, interchangeably awful one-percenters (including Heather Graham and Tom Felton). She points out some of the other maids, all anonymous Black and brown women.<\/p>\n

During this walkthrough, Asia keeps overhearing talk of \u201cofferings.\u201d<\/p>\n

After she drops off to sleep in her new quarters, she is menaced by figures in pig masks and black hooded cloaks. Asia is no sacrificial lamb, though.<\/p>\n

Once she gets out her machete, she\u2019s chopping off hands, feet and heads all over the place. This survive-the-night ordeal will be complicated, however, by the fact Asia\u2019s adversaries are effectively immortal. Thanks to a literal deal with the devil, they can regenerate, their wounds healing, their limbs reattaching, and Asia will be forced to kill them again and again.<\/p>\n

This scenario might work if the setups were more varied and the fight choreography better. As it is, it just means the conflict \u2014 no matter how insanely gruesome \u2014 remains curiously tension-free.<\/p>\n

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Warner Bros. Pictures via AP<\/p>\n

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Asia (Zazie Beetz) gets a creepy visitor in a scene from They Will Kill You.<\/p>\n

Sokolov makes clear homages to the cramped corridor battle of Park Chan-wook\u2019s Oldboy and the \u201croaring rampage of revenge\u201d of Quentin Tarantino\u2019s Kill Bill flicks. There are carpeted Kubrickian hallways and \u2014 weirdly \u2014 even a bit of a Wes Anderson vibe in a cartoony cross-section shot.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, there\u2019s nothing much going on under this cinematic style.<\/p>\n

Sokolov (barely) sketches in a traumatic personal backstory. Ten years ago, in a moment of crisis, Asia abandoned her sister, Maria (Industry\u2019s Myha\u2019la), and is now determined to save her.<\/p>\n

On the political level, there\u2019s a nod to the ever-popular eat-the-rich genre. All the super-wealthy satanists are silly and ghastly, but we barely meet them before they\u2019re getting repeatedly chopped up.<\/p>\n

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Kevin Rollason\u2019s Sunday newsletter honouring and remembering lives well-lived in Manitoba.<\/p>\n

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The maids, meanwhile, also remain nameless and silent, making this potential subtext feel more like perfunctory box-ticking.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s an odd lack of follow-through even with the fun stuff.<\/p>\n

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Warner Bros. Pictures via AP<\/p>\n

Heather Graham plays one of the awful one-percenter residents of the apartment building The Virgil in a scene from They Will Kill You.<\/p>\n

At one point, we\u2019re told that eternal life is so tedious that each level of The Virgil is dedicated to a separate vice. We get a glimpse of the orgy floor, but the other floors don\u2019t even get a mention. (What might they involve? Covetousness? Smoking?)<\/p>\n

Sadly, we seem to spend most of our time in the ductwork system and the elevator shaft. While Beetz has loads of screen presence and is impressively tough in a tight corner, it would be great if They Will Kill You gave her more to do.<\/p>\n

winnipegfreepress.com\/alisongillmor<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\"Alison<\/p>\n

Alison Gillmor
Writer
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Studying at the University of Winnipeg and later Toronto\u2019s York University, Alison Gillmor planned to become an art historian. She ended up catching the journalism bug when she started as visual arts reviewer at the Winnipeg Free Press in 1992.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0 Read full biography<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A young woman, an exclusive New York apartment building with a dark history, a satanic cult \u2014 this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":566254,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194296],"tags":[49,48,22073],"class_list":["post-566253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-winnipeg","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-winnipeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=566253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566253\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/566254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=566253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=566253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=566253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}