Intensity: 🩸🩸🩸1/2 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Directed by Kirill Sokolov
Written by Kirill Sokolov and Alex Litvak
Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present to you the most violent horror movie I have seen this year: They Will Kill You. This stylish and gleefully gory action-horror-comedy takes on a familiar theme and injects it with nitro boosters. Zazie Beetz plays Asia Reves, a woman searching for her sister at her last known location: a New York Hotel that is secretly a Satanic Temple. Is she trapped? Or are the cultists inside the ones who are stuck with a woman with some serious fighting mojo? It’s a bit of both. This is a fan-favorite film from the 2026 festival circuit, now available on HBO.
They Will Kill You is Russian writer/director Kirill Sokolov’s American film debut, and he has an artistic visual flair and a willingness to spill some blood. A lot of blood. From the opening moments where Asia steps into the sinister Virgil Hotel, the film crackles with kinetic energy. The story has just enough of a foundation to anchor the plot and breathe credibility into what happens. However, the story bears strong resemblances to some other recent crowd-pleasing movies.
Audiences who enjoyed the 2019 films Ready or Not and Satanic Panic will lock in pretty quickly. Fortunately for me, I loved both of those films, and I quickly acclimated to They Will Kill You. The Satanic Cult reveals itself early in the story, and then it becomes a floor-by-floor battle to the top of the tower. What separates this film from its cinematic sisters is the sheer level of savagery in play. Swords, shotguns, cleavers, screwdrivers, and a flaming axe are all featured prominently. A key plot element extends the mayhem into continuous loops of split skulls and exploding body parts.
The film also behaves much like a John Wick movie, with dolly shots following the ferocious action from room to room, and the performers seeming inexhaustible in their combat prowess. It’s impressive.
For what is a mid-major production (New Line Cinema), the cast boasts a fantastic ensemble of famous or near-famous actors.
The Cast of They Will Kill You:
- Zazie Beetz plays Asia Reaves, a woman recently released from prison for shooting her abusive father, but unable to protect her sister in the process.
- Patricia Arquette plays Lily Woodhouse, the superintendent of the Virgil Hotel, and the leader of the Satanic Cult within. She has been at the Virgil for over a hundred years.
- Myha’la plays Maria Reaves, Asia’s little sister, who ten years later has now taken a job as a maid at the Virgil Hotel.
- Tom Felton plays Kevin, part of the cult.
- Heather Graham plays Sharon, part of the cult, and a cosmetic tycoon.
- Paterson Joseph plays Ray, Lily’s jaded husband and one of Asia’s few allies in the Virgil.
- Willie Ludik plays Bob, the cult’s muscle and biggest enforcer.
- David Viviers plays Tall Steve, part of the cult
- Gabe Gabriel plays Short Steve, part of the cult
A Synopsis of They Will Kill You:
Asia and Maria are on the run. Their abusive father has tracked them down at a convenience store. As they try to slip away, he corners the sisters. Asia shoots him, but he survives and manages to grab Maria as the cops arrive, forcing Asia to flee down the street. She is captured by the police and ends up serving ten years in prison.
When she gets out, she shows up on a dark and rainy night at the Virgil Hotel, looking to get a job as a new housemaid, using the name of a woman who was to take the job. She is greeted at the door by the hotel’s mistress, Lily. Asia passes as the new help, and Lily shows her around the hotel quarters, but just the maid’s quarters for now. As Asia prepares for sleep, she takes precautions because she feels she is being watched. She’s right. She is being watched. A group of black-robed cultists manages to get around her barricaded door and tries to abduct her, using secret doors and ventilation grilles to break into her room.
Prison taught her a thing or two about fighting dirty, though, and she came to the hotel prepared for battle. After taking refuge in a wardrobe, she comes out fighting, dispatching all of the intruders, decapitating Kevin and electrocuting Sharon along the way. When Asia escapes to the adjoining hallway, she is confronted by Lily… and then, one by one, the cultists she killed walk out of the room, regenerating lost limbs and seeming only slightly worse for wear. The Virgil is a temple for Satan, and the wealthy residents have signed a pact which allows immortality in exchange for a sacrifice, and now, Asia is to be the sacrificial lamb.
Still, Asia has a good bit of energy in reserve and manages to find her way into the catacombs within the walls of the hotel, and the pursuit is on. Asia continues looking for Maria, with a big, bloodthirsty cult mob in pursuit. Both are getting more than they bargained for. Kill a cultist, and they bounce back.
Evaluation of They Will Kill You:
In a word: Fun. The violence is gratuitous, graphic, and over-the-top, but in a comic-booky way. I appreciate that Sokolov pulls back for the action sequences and does not resort to quick-cut editing. The stuntwork is top-shelf, particularly for a horror movie. Often, horror movies cut away from a shot to set up a gore effect. In They Will Kill You, there are several extended fight sequences where the camera floats freely around the action for a long one-er, showing all of the stuntwork, and it’s glorious.
Zazie Beets has the experience for this kind of action, from her role as Domino in the Deadpool franchise, and it pays off here, big time. If she’s not doing her own stunts, the producers got someone who looks a LOT like her. The action sequences are fresh and original, and feel like they took some pages from the Hong Kong handbook. There are at least three show-stopping sequences, one in each story Act.
Artistically, Sokolov has borrowed from the masters. The hallway scenes are reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, and the Virgil Hotel, like the Overlook, has a personality. The colors are very interesting, using a curious combination of ochre, chocolate, and sea green. The movie was shot in South Africa, and I’m curious as to whether a real hotel was used for the interior shots. When the movie goes into the crawl-through-the-ductwork phase, the movie does a cutaway view of the movement, when lesser movies would just do a trailing or leading camera shot. This felt like a Wes Anderson artistic nod. Quentin Tarantino’s influence is also felt through some non-linear exposition scenes, as well as scene title cards. Lastly, the lineage of Chad Stahelski and the John Wick franchise is also a clear precedent.
I was surprised when both Tom Felton and Heather Graham appeared to get eliminated from the movie. I thought, “Well, those were expensive cameos.” And then there was a pause when Lily and Asia confronted each other in the hallway, and I realized… ohhh, this isn’t over for them just yet. Really clever, and a definite wink to the audience.
Concluding Thoughts:
In a year that also gave us the hyper-violent Evil Dead Burn, which I thought could have earned an NC-17, the violence in this movie reminds me more of Deadpool. Gore in the service of a good time. And, lots of it. I think the sheer quantity of the violence put a cap on the box office. As horror movies go, it was fairly expensive, at $20 million, and it didn’t break even at the box office. So, I doubt that it will get a sequel, though it has all the ingredients to be a cult-favorite film.
If I were to have one big complaint about this movie, it is the title. It is so generic and unmemorable that you will be hard-pressed to remember it even after you just watched it. Such was the case for me.
Currently, They Will Kill You can be streamed on HBO, but is also available on Prime. It’s a bit of a judgment call as to whether this is suitable for younger audiences. My gut instinct says no, even if the violence is cartoonish. However, it isn’t a scary movie, and unlike the intensity of Evil Dead Burn, you won’t be covering your eyes for any of the violence; it’s more of a fist-pump moment than the veil of cowardice. If you want some easy breezy action horror for an evening, you would be hard-pressed to do better than this.