TL;DR: A chaotic, gore-heavy horror-action hybrid with flashes of creativity and a strong lead performance from Zazie Beetz, but weighed down by derivative influences, uneven humor, and underdeveloped characters. Fun in the moment, forgettable in the long run.
They Will Kill You
I walked into They Will Kill You expecting chaos, and to be fair, chaos is exactly what I got. The problem is that it’s the kind of chaos that feels like it’s been assembled from a starter pack of “cool stuff other directors already did better.” It’s loud, gory, occasionally inventive, and powered by a kind of hyperactive film-school energy that never quite matures into something memorable. Think of it as a mixtape made by someone with excellent taste—but zero original bars.
Still, I can’t pretend I didn’t have fun at times. This is one of those films that constantly teeters between “this is dumb” and “okay, that was actually kind of sick,” often within the same scene.
Let’s unpack this blood-soaked fever dream.
The Setup: Satanic Real Estate Is the New Luxury Amenity
The premise is deliciously absurd in a way that immediately hooked me. A high-end New York co-op building called the Virgil turns out to be less “Upper East Side prestige” and more “gateway to eternal damnation.” Residents aren’t just wealthy—they’re the kind of wealthy that casually dabbles in human sacrifice like it’s Pilates.
Enter Asia, played by Zazie Beetz, who takes a housekeeping job that quickly morphs into a survival horror scenario. And when I say quickly, I mean the movie wastes zero time getting to the point. There’s no slow burn here. It’s more like someone lit a flamethrower and said, “Yeah, that’ll do.”
The building itself is the real star in the opening act. It’s got this eerie, vertical labyrinth vibe—each floor essentially its own little hellscape—which instantly reminded me of that very specific subgenre of “trapped-in-a-structure” storytelling. The film leans hard into this level-by-level progression, like a video game where each floor is a boss fight with increasingly unhinged NPCs.
It’s a great idea. The execution? A bit more hit-and-miss.
Zazie Beetz Carries the Whole Thing (Mostly on Vibes and Grit)
Let’s be real: without Zazie Beetz, this movie collapses faster than a Jenga tower in an earthquake.
She plays Asia with a kind of grounded toughness that the rest of the film doesn’t always deserve. While everything around her is spiraling into cartoonishly violent madness, she stays locked in, giving the story just enough emotional gravity to keep it from floating off into pure nonsense.
But even she isn’t immune to the script’s limitations. The character is more functional than fully developed—her motivations are clear (save her sister, survive the building), but the emotional depth feels more implied than explored. It’s like the movie assumes we’ll fill in the blanks ourselves.
And to be fair, we mostly do, because Beetz is that good. She’s basically doing narrative heavy lifting while dodging axes and demonic cultists.
The Gore: Inventive, Gross, and Weirdly Playful
If you’re here for creative violence, congratulations—you’ve come to the right movie.
This is where They Will Kill You actually shines. The film embraces a kind of gleeful absurdity when it comes to gore. Bodies don’t just break; they get reimagined. Physics is more of a suggestion than a rule. There’s a tactile, almost DIY quality to some of the effects that gives it a scrappy charm.
There’s one sequence involving a disembodied eyeball that I genuinely can’t stop thinking about. Not because it’s scary, but because it’s so bizarrely committed to the bit. It rolls, it moves, it becomes this strange little protagonist for a few minutes—and somehow, it works.
This is the movie at its best: when it stops trying to impress you with references and just leans into its own weirdness.
Unfortunately, those moments are surrounded by a lot of noise.
The Tone Problem: Stuck Between Clever and Cringe
Here’s where things start to wobble.
The film desperately wants to be funny. Like, aggressively funny. But the humor often lands with a dull thud instead of a sharp sting. There’s a juvenile streak running through the script—think excessive swearing, try-hard edginess, and jokes that feel like they were written during a late-night energy drink binge.
And look, I’m not above dumb humor. I love dumb humor. But it has to be sharp, intentional, and ideally surprising. Here, it often feels like the movie is quoting the idea of humor rather than actually being funny.
At one point, there’s a reference to a certain iconic “flesh wound” joke. And that’s kind of the issue in a nutshell. If you’re going to remind me of something that legendary, you better bring something equally memorable to the table. Otherwise, it just highlights the gap.
The Influences: A Greatest Hits Album Without a New Track
Watching this film feels like playing spot-the-inspiration.
You can see the fingerprints of filmmakers like Tarantino, Park Chan-wook, and Bong Joon-ho all over it. The problem isn’t that those influences exist—it’s that they’re so visible they become distracting. Instead of feeling like a unique voice shaped by great directors, it feels like a collage of borrowed styles.
There’s a rhythm to the dialogue that screams “Tarantino-lite.” The violence occasionally dips into Oldboy territory. The structure of the building and its class commentary echoes Snowpiercer. But none of these elements fully cohere into something new.
It’s like the film is constantly reminding you of better movies instead of becoming one itself.
The Supporting Cast: A Mixed Bag of Missed Opportunities
This is where things get frustrating.
There’s a surprisingly stacked cast here, but most of them are given almost nothing to work with. Characters blur together, motivations are thin, and performances range from “phoning it in” to “actively confused.”
Patricia Arquette shows up as the building’s manager with an accent that feels like it was generated by a randomizer. It’s not bad in an entertaining way—it’s just… there.
Others, like Heather Graham and Tom Felton, have moments but never quite break out. It’s the kind of ensemble where you keep waiting for someone to steal the show, but no one ever fully does.
The exception is the central sister dynamic, which at least gives the story a clear emotional anchor—even if it’s not explored as deeply as it could have been.
Action and Pacing: Energetic but Exhausting
I’ll give the movie this: it does not slow down.
From the moment things kick off, it’s basically a nonstop sprint through increasingly ridiculous scenarios. Fight choreography is solid, sometimes even impressive, and there’s a kinetic energy that keeps you engaged even when the script falters.
But that same energy becomes a problem over time. Without enough variation in tone or pacing, the chaos starts to blur together. What should feel like escalation ends up feeling like repetition.
By the final act, I found myself a little numb to it all—which is not what you want from a movie built on shock and spectacle.
Final Verdict: Fun in Bursts, Forgettable Overall
They Will Kill You is the cinematic equivalent of junk food. It’s messy, indulgent, occasionally satisfying, and ultimately not something you’ll think about much the next day.
There are flashes of brilliance—particularly in its practical effects and willingness to get weird—but they’re buried under a pile of derivative ideas and uneven execution. It’s not a bad movie, but it’s not a great one either. It exists in that frustrating middle ground where you can see the potential, but it never fully clicks.
If you’re a hardcore horror fan or just in the mood for something loud and gory, you’ll probably find enough here to enjoy. Just don’t expect it to reinvent anything.
