\n\tAt the end of it all, a flabbergasted detective asks a survivor what\u2019s just occurred. The victim, battered and exhausted and covered in blood, grunts out just two words: \u201cRich people.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThat\u2019s about the extent of the social commentary on offer from They Will Kill You, a new action-horror-comedy set in a Manhattan luxury building whose Satan-worshipping tenants engage in ritualistic killings of their mostly poor and marginalized staff. But it\u2019s all the excuse writer-director Kirill Sokolov<\/a> (Why Don\u2019t You Just Die!<\/a>) and his co-writer Alex Litvak need to unleash great big arterial sprays with gonzo style, to enjoyably giddy, if ultimately insubstantial, effect.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\tThey Will Kill You\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\tThe Bottom Line<\/p>\n \tNot a lot of brains, but plenty of splattered guts.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tRelease date: Friday, March 27 \n\tArriving just one week after Ready or Not 2: Here I Come<\/a> hit theaters \u2014 and having first debuted at SXSW just a few days after Ready or Not 2: Here I Come did \u2014 They Will Kill You will inevitably draw comparisons. It\u2019s impossible to argue they aren\u2019t fair.<\/p>\n \n\tBoth films are about ordinary women brought into a tightly guarded enclave of the one percent, where they\u2019re to be hunted for sacrifice by entitled sociopaths who\u2019ve struck a literal deal with the Devil. Both films saddle their heroines with estranged younger sisters who harbor lingering resentment about having been abandoned by their big sisters in their youth, but now must make up with them in order to survive. Both films devolve into frenetic yet stylish melees deploying all manner of unusual weaponry before, finally, confronting the supernatural head-on.<\/p>\n \n\tBut any assumption that they\u2019re the same movie will be wiped out the moment the satin-cloaked Satanists of They Will Kill You corner Asia (Zazie Beetz<\/a>), the newest maid at the exclusive Virgil apartments, in a closet \u2014 only for her to come out literally swinging with a sword, slicing one of their heads clean off to uncork the first of what will be many, many geysers of blood to come.<\/p>\n \n\tAsia, we learn through one of several flashbacks, is no oblivious victim but an \u201cavenger,\u201d as her boss (Patricia Arquette<\/a>\u2018s Lily) puts it, with an irritated sigh suggesting she isn\u2019t the first. Asia has come here under false pretenses with the intention of rescuing her sister, Maria (Myha\u2019la<\/a>), another recently hired maid. She\u2019s thus armed to the teeth with blades and guns and ammo, though perhaps nothing is deadlier than her fighting spirit, honed over years of prison brawls. The residents of the Virgil, for their part, are more than ready to defend what\u2019s theirs, with one major supernatural asset up their capacious sleeves that gives them the upper hand.<\/p>\n \n\tThe simplicity of the plot \u2014 the only way out is a fire escape at the top of the building, forcing Asia to fight her way up its nine floors, \u00e1 la The Raid: Redemption or Dredd \u2014 gives Sokolov a relatively blank canvas across which to splatter a grand and gory pastiche of seemingly everything he has ever found cool, from video games to anim\u00e9 to John Wick to Sergio Leone and Quentin Tarantino. If he\u2019s yet to coalesce all those influences into his own distinctive style, he wields them with gleeful enthusiasm. He dials the violence up to Looney Tunes silliness while Beetz infuses it all with an effortless cool, giving Asia an athleticism that makes her a pleasure to watch and a defiance that makes her a joy to root for.<\/p>\n \n\tAsia never swings an axe when she can swing a flaming axe so that she can set her enemies on fire even as she hacks off their limbs. Furniture getting hurled through the air is captured in slow-motion, all the better to admire when it shatters on someone. Gunshots are punctuated by flurries of mattress stuffing falling through the air like snow. And I haven\u2019t even revealed the big twist that accounts for the film\u2019s most eye-poppingly gruesome sights; those, I\u2019ll leave you to goggle at in the theater for yourself.<\/p>\n \n\tBut even with that endless appetite for mayhem \u2014 and even with a trim 94-minute run time \u2014 there\u2019s a point at which They Will Kill You starts to leave intriguing ideas on the table in favor of repeating itself. Take the layout of the building. We\u2019re told each floor is themed after a different deadly sin, but aside from a brief glimpse of a writhing orgy on the \u201cfuck floor\u201d (Lust, obviously) and a set piece in an empty kitchen (Gluttony, presumably), we don\u2019t get to see any of the others. Instead, we spend much of that time crawling around dark underground tunnels and climbing up nondescript shafts. It seems a missed opportunity to set the Virgil apart from any of a million hallways we\u2019ve seen action stars punch their way through before.<\/p>\n \n\tThen there are the characters. They Will Kill You barely bothers fleshing out its robed and masked masses of villains; the ones played by Heather Graham and Tom Felton are distinguishable only because they\u2019re played by Heather Graham and Tom Felton. But it has not much more interest in key characters like Maria, whose motives shift with the needs of the plot. Or Lily and her husband Roy (Paterson Joseph), about whom I could tell you almost nothing beyond that Arquette seems to have decided halfway through the shoot to adopt a \u201clocal newscaster on St. Paddy\u2019s day\u201d-level Irish accent, and Joseph to pick up a gently Southern one.<\/p>\n \n\tEven its haves-versus-have-nots posturing turns out to be less about exploring social injustice than allowing us to root for ultra-violence guilt-free, secure in the knowledge that these rich actually are not like the rest of us because they are much, much, much worse. <\/p>\n \n\tBut perhaps it\u2019s for the best. For all the weapons in Asia\u2019s arsenal, thoughtfulness or emotionality or complexity are nowhere among them. They Will Kill You is simply not equipped to serve up a nuanced exploration of class division, or a poignant drama of sisterly devotion, or what have you. What it is armed for is violence \u2014 lots and lots and lots of violence, so brutally nasty it comes all the way back around to childishly funny. That, it is happy to dish out in spades, with enough gusto to sate even the most bloodthirsty filmgoer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At the end of it all, a flabbergasted detective asks a survivor what\u2019s just occurred. 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Cast: Zazie Beetz, Myha’la, Paterson Joseph, Tom Felton, Heather Graham, Patricia Arquette
Director: Kirill Sokolov
Screenwriters: Kirill Sokolov, Alex Litvak
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRated R,
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t1 hour 34 minutes\n\t\t<\/p>\n