They Will Kill You

Grade: C+

They Will Kill You is like a different draft of Ready or Not 2: Here I Come. It’s uncannily coincidental that these two movies came out just a week apart. Both have a pair of sisters who haven’t seen each other in a while, with unresolved issues to unpack. There’s cartoonish, over-the-top violence – including a big, bombastic fight set in a large banquet room. The older sister spends most of both films with a wound on her left hand. And oh yeah, there’s a satanic cult involved. The comparisons are unavoidable.

There’s also a clear Tarantino motif. Spaghetti western music plays on the soundtrack while chapter titles flash on the screen. Our heroine goes around killing people, Kill Bill style. They often have the courtesy to wait their turn and attack one by one, like the polite vampires in From Dusk Till Dawn. Zazie Beetz (Joaquin Phoenix’s love interest from Joker and Joker: Folie à Deux) stars as Asia Reaves. It begins with a flashback of Asia and her sister Maria fleeing from their abusive father. He catches up to them at a gas station. Asia shoots him in self-defense, but goes to prison anyway. 

Cut to 10 years later. Asia has just gotten released, and has infiltrated an exclusive high-rise apartment building in New York City to rescue Maria. Asia gets in by pretending to be a newly hired housekeeper. How she knew Maria needed rescuing, how she knew Maria was there, and how she knew who the new hire was so she could steal her ID are plot points that either I missed, or weren’t answered. At about 90 minutes, the film cuts to the chase pretty quickly, and then does it over and over.

I enjoyed the sets, color scheme, the first few kills, and the heightened Sam Raimian gore. I liked the bit involving a disembodied eyeball that rolled around to spy on conversations and find out what’s going on. Since it’s just an eye and not an ear, one wonders how it could hear – but that’s the joke. The cast includes some veteran and newer familiar faces. Aside from Beetz, we have Patricia Arquette, Heather Graham, and Myha’la (Dumb Money, Bodies Bodies Bodies) as the present-day Maria. It starts off promisingly, then wears thin as it runs out of ideas, and continues to use old ones.

The climactic sequence involves them meeting with “the head,” which is a perfect literal name for what we end up seeing. I thought about recommending They Will Kill You a few times, but I just can’t. It’s hollow, shallow, and derivative in a way that doesn’t bring anything original to what it’s copying. It’s just doing them again. I’d rather go back and watch the inspirations. A critic I listen to who liked it said you shouldn’t think too much about the movie. Can’t argue with that. You could see They Will Kill You and not think, or you could keep your brain and enjoy Ready or Not 2 instead.

Grade: C+