Photo: Warner Bros./Everett Collection
At first glance, the plots of They Will Kill You, the new Zazie Beetz horror flick that debuted at SXSW on Tuesday, and Ready or Not 2, the much-anticipated horror sequel that premiered at the fest late last week, seem nearly identical. Both are one-night-in-hell slashers about two estranged sisters forced to fight their way out of a lair of rich people who’ve joined a devil cult and are hellbent on sacrificing them to their dark lord. They even debut one week after another, the latter on March 20, the former on March 27.
The differences? The sisters in They Will Kill You are Black women played by Zazie Beetz and Myha’la, not blondes (Samara Weaving and Kathryn Newton); they were lured in as maids instead of marrying into the wrong family; their evil rich people are just bloodthirsty, not playing a twisted game to rule the world; and the movie was made by one sick Russian director, Kiril Sokolov, instead of a sicko American directing collective, Radio Silence.
Most important — and this is a major detail — the evil rich people in They Will Kill You, which is being released by Warner Bros., are (SPOILER) immortal. They’ve signed a pact in blood that lets them live forever in a luxury New York City highrise called The Virgil, as long as they sacrifice an innocent as payment for their own forever-life.
And that’s how the disembodied eyeball of one Heather Graham became the runaway star of SXSW.
I’m not telling you anything you can’t see in at least one of the trailers, but the movie involves Beetz’s character, Asia, who learned how to fight in prison, engaging in samurai warfare and crazy chase scenes through crawl spaces in a quest to find her younger sister, Marie (Myha’la), whom she regrets abandoning years earlier. During that extended crawl space scene, the eyeball of Graham’s rich-lady character gets separated from her body, squiggling around ventilation shafts, slingshotting itself up to different stories, and reporting back to the others about Asia’s whereabouts — because, well, these rich bitches can never die.
The eyeball is such a key character that when the moderator walked out on stage for the Q&A at Austin’s Paramount Theatre, he was followed by a bigger, slithering, animatronic version of said eyeball, which he quickly nicknamed “Iris” and declared “the greatest prop that’s ever been on the Paramount stage.”
The eyeball soaked up its time onstage, like Adrien Brody giving an Oscars speech, as the crowd hooted and documented its every move on their cell phones. ‘Do you want to steal the spotlight for a little while?’ the moderator asked. Iris the eyeball nodded vigorously, before taking her sweet time to exist stage right, trailing red ligaments behind her like that errant feather from Demi Moore’s Oscars dress.
From left: Photo: Adam Kissick/SXSW Conference & Festivals via Getty ImagesPhoto: Adam Kissick/SXSW Conference & Festivals via Getty Images
From top: Photo: Adam Kissick/SXSW Conference & Festivals via Getty ImagesPhoto: Adam Kissick/SXSW Conference & Festivals via Getty Images
During the Q&A, director Solokov said that he and script co-writer Alex Litvak wanted to pay homage to movies like The Evil Dead and Rosemary’s Baby while upending the trope of the fragile horror heroine. Plus, he wanted to “just see how much crazy shit Hollywood producers would let us do.” He particularly likes seeing “people kick each other in a wide shot,” he said, and apologized to his actors (who seemed completely stoked) for everything he put them through, adding, “but sometimes suffering, like, helps.” In between takes and at night, Myha’la said, Tom Felton (who plays one of the evil rich people) would sit around with his ukulele and make up songs for everyone.
Paying tribute to Beetz in his introduction, Solokov said, “You are a warrior goddess, a force of nature in the shape of a woman. You are a demon slayer, the queen of tears and pain. And you are the coolest, bloody samurai I have imagined in my life.” He also said he thought “the pantheon of movie heroes has been joined by one more kick-ass girl.”
Most of the cast was seeing the film for the first time in that SXSW theater. Myha’la, who’d never done a movie where she had to run around with things exploding around her, said she wasn’t prepared for the experience of watching it. “I didn’t know it was going to be this badass,” she said. “Like, there was no predicting! The needle drops are insane. The sound design is insane. As much as Kirill could describe it, there was no way of knowing it was going to feel this cool.” Patricia Arquette, who plays the manager of The Virgil, said this was one of only two movies she’d ever seen at its festival premiere with a real audience, and that it was “an incredible experience.” (The other was Boyhood.)
As the crowd exited the theater, we were greeted by cloaked figures wearing the satanic pig masks used in the movie and handing out keychains with Iris the eyeball attached. I grabbed a few and gave one to a friend, who loved it with or without the context. His review of the keychain just as easily could have applied to the movie itself. “Good quality,” he said. “Squishy!”
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