‘They Will Kill You’ a bit of overkill
Published 10:14 am Friday, March 27, 2026
This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Zazie Beetz in a scene from “They Will Kill You.” (GRAHAM BARTHOLOMEW)
Another week, another heroine gets hunted down by rich devil worshippers film — this time the not so subtly titled “They Will Kill You.”
A week after the “Ready or Not” sequel debuted in theaters, here is a film with a similar theme, but definitely not similar results. Despite a very game lead performance from Zazie Beetz and some creative visuals from writer-director Kirill Sokolov, this is a film that plays its full hand early and leaves little suspense after the reveal.
It’s a blood-soaked rinse and repeat that grows tiresome rather quickly.
In “Kill” Beetz plays Asia Reaves, just out of prison trying to find her missing kid sister. The trail leads her to a New York high rise with very selective residents known as the Virgil. Asia is there posing as the newest employee and once inside she discovers the building is the home for a group of rich satanists (including Heather Graham and Tom Felton from “Harry Potter” fame) who have brought her in as their next sacrifice.
But Asia can more than take care of herself, learning to fight while in prison, thus the power struggle begins — with the young woman trying to fight her way through this wave of villains to find and save her sister.
“They Will Kill You” doesn’t just borrow from “Ready or Not,” it’s a film with some creative visual flare at times — with Sokolov borrowing from the “Kill Bill” movies, “The Raid” and any of a number of Blaxploitation films.
The fight sequences are fun at first, but eventually it starts to be the same fight with maybe one or two tweaks to the staging. You can only see blood splatter so many times before it loses its impact, especially when it is played for laughs most of the time.
The humorous stuff only creates a film that suffers from tonal balance, with some serious undertones of abuse and class struggle wedged in between the Looney Tunes-style fight sequences.
While Beetz does everything she can to keep it interesting, the rest of the supporting cast is mostly wasted with Graham and Felton basically afterthoughts.
Only Patricia Arquette as the building manager gets anything of substance, but even that wears out its welcome way too soon.
It all adds up to a whole lot of nothing with “They Will Kill You” just a bloody mess of a horror comedy.
Grade: C
About Micheal Compton
I am a sports reporter and movie critic for the Bowling Green Daily News.
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