THEY WILL KILL YOU is one of those rare cases where the first time I saw the trailer was the first time I heard of it, and before it was over it had become one of my most anticipated movies. What it conveyed was that Zazie Beetz (GEOSTORM) would play a maid at a hotel that’s run by satanists, they try to sacrifice her, she runs around with a sword chopping them up in spectacular, stylized action scenes. It looked like KILL BILL meets READY OR NOT, and that shorthand does capture some of it. But happily the trailer was also holding back some of the other ingredients in the pot, and they all add up to a fun time at the motion picture house.

Beetz plays Asia Reaves, who ten years ago was on the streets with her little sister Maria (I think there’s a young version whose name I can’t find, but the grown up Maria is Myha’la, BODIES BODIES BODIES). They were running from their abusive father when Asia landed herself in prison. Now she’s out, showing up on a stormy night for a job as a maid at a historic apartment building called The Virgil. I would say this was secretly a sinister place, but they’re pretty open about it – there’s a big pentagram and devil sculptures on the exterior. The characters don’t try to be subtle any more than the movie does.

The superintendent is Lilith (Patricia Arquette, PRAYER OF THE ROLLERBOYS, doing an Irish accent), who introduces Asia to some of the rich residents, including Sharon (Heather Graham, EVEN COWGIRLS GET THE BLUES) and her friend Kevin (Tom Felton, RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES) and shows her to her room, where Lilith’s husband Ray (Paterson Joseph, AEON FLUX, WONKA) has been snooping around for some reason. But it’s not Ray she should worry about: he’s actually trying to warn her about the satanists in the robes and pig masks who will sneak into her room at night planning to sacrifice her.

Whatever you think of this movie I bet you’ll agree it’s not fuckin around. It’s 94 minutes, it gets right to business, any time it threatens to settle in too much it throws a big curve ball to mix things up. As soon as the cultists come after her she’s fighting back, first with feet and furniture, then with an arsenal she turns out to have in her luggage. It’s good, dynamically shot action that mixes relentless scrapping with more showy martial arts, enthusiastic gore and shotgun blasts that send people flying like ping pong balls. The gimmick is that she learned to fight from being in so many prison brawls, but somehow she’s also great with swords, which I support. Her attackers do not survive the encounter.

(Stunt coordinator: Kerry Gregg [CHAPPIE, MONSTER HUNTER]; Fight coordinator: Russ McCarroll [stunt double for Jin Au-Yeung and Tony Jaa in MONSTER HUNTER].)

Lilith demands to know how the hell their random sacrifice was ready to kick so much ass, so Asia reveals that she’s not who she said she was. Turns out her sister Maria disappeared here and she’s on an undercover rescue mission. But the cultists have a more surprising secret, a supernatural one that escalates things in very funny ways. This movie is action packed, full of visual storytelling, it looks cool, it’s full of absurd gimmicks and clever touches, from the way the title appears on screen to the form their god takes and how Asia defeats it. The Organic Mechanic himself, Angus Sampson, has a small role as a private detective, and James Remar (MORTAL KOMBAT: ANNIHILATION) has an important voice role.

This is the American debut of Russian director Kirill Sokolov, co-writing with Alex Litvak (PREDATORS, THE THREE MUSKETEERS). I have not seen Sokolov’s debut WHY DON’T YOU JUST DIE! (2018), but my friend Rich saw it at Fantastic Fest and still raves about it. Okay, I’ll look it up. He also has one called NO LOOKING BACK (2021). They all seem to have that type of energy that delights audiences at genre film festivals while likely causing certain others to roll their eyes because they think it’s gauche to be this enthusiastic about trying to make a cool movie infused with the spirit of all your favorite shit. And you know, if somebody doesn’t have time for Zazie Beetz running around in her underwear chopping motherfuckers up, that’s certainly their right. But they can’t force it on me. I have time. I’ll make time.

Thoughts of KILL BILL are unavoidable at first. My favorite Tarantino movie echoes in the cool poses, the non-linear story with chapter titles, the having to crawl because she can’t move her muscles, the delivery of some of her flowery lines – shit, she’s even barefoot and some creep licks her foot. Of course some of this could just be shared influences – Tarantino didn’t invent samurai decapitation blood showers, old school kung fu sound effects, or the spaghetti western guitars referenced in the score by Carlos Rafael Rivera (A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES). But in combination those things can’t help but evoke KILL BILL, and then a beat drops that even sounds like RZA, because oh shit it actually is a RZA song.

Luckily there’s much more at work here than Beatrix Kiddo: The Next Generation. Obviously there’s some ROSEMARY’S BABY in the whole idea of the old building occupied by secret satanists. I thought of THE RAID when there was a building announcement telling everybody to kill her, and when she was between the walls with knives poking through at her. There’s a beautiful slow motion leap and bisection with a flaming ax that would fit right into NINJA SCROLL. The energetic camerawork (cinematographer: Isaac Bauman, Loki) reminded me of Sam Raimi (huge compliment), but the gore humor feels a little more early Peter Jackson. The thick atmosphere – opening in violently pouring rain, panning down the very artificial looking Virgil building – put me in mind of bygone Dimension or New Line Cinema genre movies stylized to capture the feel of what they would’ve called “graphic novels.” That’s without realizing that this actually is a New Line Cinema movie (and co-starring one of the Dream Warriors!).

In short it’s a type of movie I’d be happy to see more of. The recent one it reminds me of most – not in details but in spirit – is BOY KILLS WORLD. They’re both aggressively stylish and smart-alecky genre mash-ups with cool music, cartoony ideas and a very dedicated physical performance by a known actor doing lots of martial arts. I’d say this is more tonally controlled than BOY, though, and doesn’t wrap up in a way that compromises its themes.

The depiction of the same rich people living high on the hog for generations by exploiting the poor is as blunt as everything else in THEY WILL KILL YOU. In its horror mythology there is a list of the cultists given power by their god, and sometimes when a name is crossed off (such as from death) they’ll allow one of the servants to join the list. But the vast majority of the people who work for them will never get that chance, and if they do they suck because they’re fucking traitors. They should know better.

I mentioned the openly satanic facade of The Virgil. Sign o’ the times, huh? Rich people don’t have to pretend to be good guys anymore. They can just be cartoon villains now. They’re gonna start building Snake Mountain and shit.

As much as I liked pretty much everything about this movie, its biggest strength is very obviously the lead performance by Beetz. If you’re like me and watched Donald Glover’s show Atlanta (2016-2022) you already knew the deal. That’s a brilliant show with a perfect cast, of which co-stars Brian Tyree Henry and LaKeith Stanfield have since broken out and each received a best supporting actor Oscar nomination. Beetz played Glover’s character’s baby mama and sometimes-girlfriend Van, generally more responsible than everyone else on the show, but still funny, and hard not to get a crush on.

I did an informal poll on Bluesky to find out if people who didn’t watch Atlanta know who Beetz is. It confirmed my guess that most people know her as Domino from DEADPOOL 2, a standout character, though I wonder how much anybody thinks of that movie anymore. She was also in JOKER, but “neighbor lady who’s nice to Joker” isn’t as exciting. She had fun in THE HARDER THEY FALL and BULLET TRAIN, if you saw those.

Anyway this doesn’t seem poised to take her to a new level career-wise, but it’s such a great example of that thing I love: the actor who clearly worked their ass off to do intensive action scenes, and excels at it. Obviously shout out to stunt doubles Katharina Araujo (THE WOMAN KING, STREET TRASH, G20) and Mbatha Sinehlar, but definitely Beetz is doing some very involved choreography and, importantly, putting all kinds of personality, comedy and style in her movements and poses. There is distinct character performance just within the violence, and then she’s just as good at the regular acting stuff. This is the territory of Uma, Charlize, Keanu, Wesley, but few other mainstream stars. She’s the real deal.