Russian director Kirill Sokolov made a name for himself with his 2018 debut Why Don’t You Just Die! — a scrappy, blood-soaked debut that had no business being as entertaining as it was. There was something genuinely demented about it, a filmmaker clearly making exactly the film he wanted to make. They Will Kill You is a different kind of test. Bigger budget, Hollywood infrastructure, a proper star. Some of that original spark survives. A lot of it doesn’t.
What Is They Will Kill You About?
Asia Reaves (Zazie Beetz) is fresh out of prison and takes a housekeeping job at The Virgil, a high-end New York residential tower with an unsettling number of locked doors. She’s not there for the work — her younger sister Maria (Myha’la) was last seen employed there, and Asia needs to find her. What she doesn’t know is that The Virgil runs on a simple arrangement: its wealthy, eternally young residents struck a deal with something dark a century ago, and every so often they need to feed it. A fresh sacrifice. Someone who won’t be missed. The new maid fits the brief perfectly — or so they thought.
Is This Just Another Ready or Not Clone?
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: Ready or Not 2 came out in American cinemas the week before this. Same premise, same setting, same basic dynamic. Two films in two weeks about a woman trapped in a building full of Satanic rich people trying to kill her. That kind of scheduling usually buries the second film entirely. Sokolov’s response is to basically shrug and lean in — he’s not pretending this story is original, he’s betting that his version of it is more fun to watch. Tarantino chapter cards, Raimi-style comedy horror, Grindhouse splatter. The influences aren’t hidden, they’re practically listed in the opening credits. Whether he pulls it off is where critics start to disagree.
Why Is Zazie Beetz the Best Thing in the Film?
She is, simply put, the reason to watch. Beetz carries a kind of controlled danger in every scene — precise in the fights, and in the quieter moments she communicates a decade of hard time and a sister she let down without ever having to say it directly. Asia isn’t a final girl waiting to become brave. She arrives ready. The film’s best moment comes early: a group of masked cultists storms her room expecting an easy night, and suddenly they’re the ones scrambling. It’s sharp and funny and a little bit thrilling, and for those few minutes the film earns every one of its influences.
Where Does It Lose the Plot?
The immortality twist. On paper it’s clever — if the villains keep regenerating, the carnage never has to end. In practice it means nothing matters. You can’t build tension around consequences that don’t exist. By the third or fourth fight the sequences blur together, and what felt chaotic and fun in the first act starts to feel like repetition with better lighting. The supporting cast gets caught in the same trap.
Patricia Arquette shouts. Tom Felton and Heather Graham show up, make an impression, then disappear into the background. The relationship between Asia and Maria — the thing that’s supposed to give all the violence some weight — never gets the room it needs to breathe.
Is They Will Kill You Worth Watching?
Sokolov clearly has an eye. There are frames in this film that look genuinely great, the set design commits fully to the gothic hotel atmosphere, and whoever ran the prosthetics department deserves a separate review. But none of that fixes a script that runs out of ideas halfway through and then keeps going anyway. The RT score of 67% from 98 critics and a Metacritic 49 from 26 reviewers probably land about where the film deserves. Worth watching for Beetz, worth skipping if you’re expecting the sum of its parts. Sokolov has the talent. Next time he needs a screenplay that keeps up with him.
Data sources: FilmDB.co.uk and TMDb. Availability of information may vary, and accuracy is not guaranteed.