In Kirill Sokolov’s new film, They Will Kill You, Zazie Beetz plays Asia, a young woman who escapes an abusive father with her young sister Maria, played by Myha’la. When the father catches up to them, Asia abandons Maria. Ten years later, she shows up in the pouring rain at a looming hotel building called The Virgil (which immediately calls to mind the writer of the ancient epic poem The Aeneid as well as the guide to Dante through his Divine Comedy – one way or another, there will be death and darkness in this building.) She is greeted by the matron of the place played by the great Patricia Arquette, named Lilith (conjuring thoughts of the Biblical tale of the first woman preceding Eve who demands the dominant sexual position). I’ve loved Arquette since her 1999 horror film Stigmata.
After introductions to several older wealthy permanent residents of the place, including Sharon (played by Heather Graham, a personal favorite of this reviewer for her performance as Mary Kelly in the underrated 2001 Johnny Depp thriller From Hell), Asia is shown to her room on the floor given to the help, all young women in maids outfits. Immediately after she settles in and falls asleep, chaos ensues. And I mean… chaos.
Courtesy Warner Bros
At one point an eyeball chases Asia down a narrow subterranean hallway and up a wall, then an elevator shaft, yada yada. Lurid and preposterous fun, maybe, but where’s the story? Where are the characters? We don’t get any. With powerhouse talent like Patricia Arquette and Heather Graham, and a strong conviction and dedicated performance by Zazie Beetz, the film gives them next to nothing to develop or even play with, aside from Asia dodging weapons and the elites cackling their evil laughs as their Satan-worshipping minions chase poor Asia around every corner. The mind checks out once an action is repeated a certain number of times with very little development happening in between.
Arquette has a curious accent that glaringly comes and goes, and she is given zero backstory or character details to explain the significance of this erratic trait, and by the third act, we don’t care, as the phantasmagoric violence has drowned out any semblance of even the fun the filmmakers clearly are reaching for. Graham does nothing but chase Asia on her knees and then vanish almost completely in the third act. What separates artists like Quentin Tarantino (hardly a “visionary” but a brilliant pastiche movie maker) from directors like Kirillo Sokolov is the understanding and handling of storytelling. I love ridiculous over-the-top comedy horror action films – when they’re done intelligently. Otherwise it’s just watching a child given a camera to indulge their every video game-inspired whim and insatiable appetite for gore and senseless rampages, set to cacophonous raging music.
Courtesy Warner Bros
Like a significant number of recent films, including the new Ready or Not sequel, They Will Kill You presents a story about Satan-worshipping elites sacrificing young blood to their demon god. A pig plays a significant part, calling to mind both the biblical story of Jesus casting the Legion of devils into a herd of pigs who run themselves off a cliff into the sea and the more recent horror of the Charles Manson killers scrawling the word “PIG” on the wall in the blood of pregnant victim Sharon Tate, wife to famous and infamous film director Roman Polanski. It’s like movies themselves are becoming every bit as decadent, detached, cynical, and complicit as the criminals they’re increasingly obsessed with portraying to a largely unsuspecting public. Or are they simply telling us and hoping we’ll… what, wake up?
The concern here, at least to this reviewer, is that such cartoonish violence and sardonic humor downplays and normalizes the underlying serious themes and realities happening currently all around us in the real world. I am a huge defender in the rights of artists to craft whatever stories they choose, and by no means are filmmakers responsible for delivering a message or restraining themselves in regards to topical events or issues. However, given the paradigm-shifting moment of awakening we are in and the very urgent and current horrors being exposed every day about the elites in our world killing innocent children, inserting this into a splatter-fest and inspiring laughter and, in my case, downright numb remove, could result in further disconnect and desensitization to precisely what demands serious attention.
That is merely one perspective and by no means the only way to look at a film like this. It is, however, my overriding takeaway from a film that, in my view, offers very little in the way of character and story, and instead serves up just another sloppy heaping pile of relentless violence with nothing much backing it up. Whatever IS behind it is ill-served by its irreverent, sardonic, and superficial delivery and tone.
They Will Kill You is now playing in theaters
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