They Will Kill You review: Horror comedy descends into madness
March seems to be the month for horror comedies this year, as They Will Kill You is coming out hot on the heels of Ready or Not 2: Here I Come. I think that’s enough of those for now!
The movie stars Zazie Beetz as Asia Reaves, who has just got out of prison after 10 years and is looking for her younger sister Maria (Myha’la). Turns out, Maria is working as a maid in the mysterious New York City high-rise called The Virgil, run by Lily (the creepy Patricia Arquette). Asia gets herself a job as a maid too, not realising that when people enter The Virgil, they rarely come back out. But Asia isn’t going down without a fight.
God bless Zazie Beetz. She may have plenty of supporting cast members, but this is her film and she capably carries the responsibility on her back. Beetz really goes through it and it’s exhausting just watching her! She has superhero-level fighting skills and incredible weapon handling and is just generally a total badass. She spends the movie grunting, screaming and yelling “bitch”. Beetz also takes plenty of hits, falls and sustains so many injuries and she does it all barefoot! What a trooper!
I really dug this movie at the start. The production design on The Virgil is unique, the casting of Heather Graham and Tom Felton as Virgil residents is inspired, and I felt like I was watching a Kill Bill-style violent action movie (completely with a katana and OTT spraying blood). The first fight sequence is fantastically staged and choreographed, with brutal injuries and kills and oodles of blood. I had no idea why these people were attacking Asia, but I enjoyed her turning the tables and giving them more than they bargained for.
It’s a shame that the rest of the film doesn’t live up to such a strong start. It held so much promise. But it soon becomes clear that the awesome concept does not have enough substance to sustain a feature. As much as Beetz throws herself into the action and looks cool as hell doing so, the slaughter actually gets a bit tedious after a while. It doesn’t help that the propulsive action is undercut by flashbacks. These are pretty brief but totally unnecessary and kill the momentum. It never manages to return to its original pace after these.
I’m all for out-there crazy ideas, but this gets too weird, even for me. It loses touch with reality in the second half, and by the final act, I was over it and ready for it to end. It’s called a horror comedy, but the comedy is only intermittent, so it would be more accurate to describe this as a violent action movie with horror elements.
In cinemas from Friday 27th March