"They Will Kill You" Review

 For the first 10 minutes or so of They Will Kill You I was wondering what the heck was going on? It opens with a woman, Asia (Zazie Beetz, Joker, Deadpool 2), her younger sister on a stormy night where their father is chasing them, culminating with her shooting him and running away as the cops arrive. Then it's 10 years later on another pouring night as Asia arrives at The Virgil, an exclusive co-op apartment building in NYC.

She's met by Lilith (Patricia Arquette, Roseanna's sister), the Irish superintendent of The Virgil, who wonders why Asia sounds different than she did on the phone when she interviewed her (Asia says she was getting over a cold), but brings her in, introducing her to a few of the residents while taking her to her room on the staff floor where the other maids live.

That night, Asia is attacked by hooded, masked figures who enter her room from the air vent and a hole in the wall behind the refrigerator. She surprises them with impressive fighting skills and weaponry like a large sword and sawed-off shotgun. After a brief, bloody battle where she beheads, dismembers, and generally messes the heck out of the assailants, she runs into the hall where she confronts Lilith, demanding to know the whereabouts of her sister, Maria (Myha'la, Industry), who had come to work at The Virgil as a maid.

This confrontation is interrupted by Asia's attackers emerging from her room, carrying their detached limbs and heads. As Asia watches in shock, they reattach them to their bodies and they're as good as new. Turns out The Virgil is a Satanic Temple and the residents and some of the staff are immortal due to their allegiance to Satan. (Membership has its privileges.)

The rest of the movie is a wild Grand Guignol exercise in cartoonish violence (e.g. watery blood sprays like a sprinkler - think: O-Ren Ishii beheading the guy in Kill Bill Pt. 1) as heads are blown off leaving the bodies crawling around and bumping into walls or a disembodied eyeball rolls along to spy on Asia. The action choreography is good and one sequence involving cultists being killed with a flaming axe, igniting their temporarily inert bodies, standing out.

But it wears thin quickly as the immortality of cult means killing is temporary until Asia finds a way to disable their power. The relationship with her estranged sister and where her allegiances lie is also handled sloppily with a bit of a cheat at the end. The roles played by Tom Felton (Harry Potter series) and Heather Graham (Boogie Nights) could've been played by anyone because they aren't characters but just more immortal cultists, albeit played by recognizable faces.

While there are some enjoyable bonkers moments (most of which are in the trailer below) the overall effect by director/co-writer Kirill Sokolov feels like he watched Evil Dead 2 and Old Boy while blasting Wu-Tang Clan on loop while taking ALL of the drugs. It's all surface with little depth and not really worth the time.

Score: 4/10. Skip it.