Studio:   New Line Cinema
Director: Kirill Sokolov
Writer:   Kirill Sokolov, Alex Litvak
Producer: Andy Muschietti, Barbara Muschietti, Dan Kagan
Stars:    Zazie Beetz, Myha’la, Paterson Joseph, Tom Felton, Heather Graham, Patricia Arquette, Angus Sampson, James Remar

Review Score:

Summary:

To reunite with her long-lost sister, a fierce fighter battles her way through a New York building that’s secretly home to Satanists with the power to defy death and dismemberment.

Synopsis:

To save her sibling from their abusive father, Asia Reaves takes her younger sister Maria on the run. Their father catches up to the girls at a Detroit convenience store. Refusing to let her sister go back with him, Asia shoots their dad when he tries to take Maria. Although their father survives the gunshot, Asia ends up arrested while Maria is given back to his custody.

Ten years into serving her sentence at a violent women’s prison where she learns how to fight, Asia remains determined to find her sister. Asia hires a P.I. who tracks Maria to an upscale co-op building in Manhattan called The Virgil, which has a history of people going missing there. The P.I. also reveals he spoke to several cleaning ladies who knew Maria from her previous job as a New Jersey motel housekeeper and one of them, Isabelle Davison, is scheduled to start a new job at The Virgil.

Upon leaving prison, Asia impersonates Isabelle Davison to infiltrate The Virgil. Although Asia is prepared to do whatever it takes to get to her sister, she is unaware that the building’s elite residents are secretly Satanists who make human sacrifices in exchange for immortality that allows them to resurrect from death and regenerate body parts.

Longtime building manager Lily Woodhouse greets Asia upon her arrival and shows her she will be joining a large coterie of maids who service The Virgil. Lily is introduced to several of The Virgil’s residents, who include cosmetics mogul Sharon Vanderbilt, Dr. Sheapman and his wife Anne, Kevin Sullivan, Bob Thorton, two men nicknamed Tall Steve and Small Steve, and an odd boy named Damian. Asia also meets Lily’s handyman husband Ray, who is surprisingly rude toward his wife.

Noticing oddities like a face peering at her through a vent and the words “they will kill you” appearing in steam on her bathroom mirror, Asia fortifies her bedroom before going to sleep. Despite this, Bob Thorton sneaks into the room wearing a black cultist’s robe and pig mask during the night. A violent struggle ensues, but it ends when Asia knocks out Bob.

Also wearing robes and masks, Sharon, Kevin, and the two Steves use secret entrances to enter Asia’ room. Defending herself from their attack, Asia electrocutes Sharon, but Sharon and Bob both recover.

Another violent fight occurs. Asia decapitates Kevin with a sword and shoots Small Steve with a shotgun. Tall Steve loses a hand and a foot. Asia repeatedly stabs Bob and causes Sharon to collapse on the floor.

Bob crawls into the hallway. Asia follows after Bob to finish him off with her sword and ends up confronting Lily, who demands to know who Asia really is. Asia identifies herself and declares she came to The Virgil for her sister Maria Reaves.

All five people Asia just killed, including those who lost body parts, resurrect and assemble in the hallway with reattached limbs. Lily directs a maid named Sophia to attack Asia. Asia stabs Sophia through the stomach with her sword before barricading herself in a room where Damian attacks her. Asia punches Damian to the floor after he stabs her with a knife. Before the maid dies from her wound, Lily instructs Sophia to clean up her own blood once she resurrects.

Asia escapes the room through a hidden hatch in the floor that leads to a labyrinthine crawlspace. Bob crawls after Asia, but she escapes.

Asia makes her way to a secret space behind a bookcase where she overhears Lily, Sharon, and Kevin discussing their immortality and their need to offer Asia as a sacrifice. The Satanists find Asia hiding and pin her to the wall with a sword through her hand. Asia mutilates her hand to pull it free and return to the crawlspace tunnels. Sharon comes after Asia, but Asia explodes Sharon’s entire head with a shotgun blast. Sharon’s headless body hurriedly crawls after Asia.

Asia is unexpectedly rescued by Lily’s husband Ray, who escorts her to safety. Ray explains that The Virgil is really a temple to Satan. Over 100 years ago, their cult’s founders made their demonic deal for immortality. As long as someone’s name remains on a certain list, that person cannot die if at least some piece of their body remains. For the required sacrifices, the wealthy residents lure in poor people like Asia and the other maids, but they occasionally allow them a chance to join the cult. Ray adds that Asia is intended to be the next offering to Satan.

Ray takes Asia to a room where she reunites with her sister Maria, who has been working as a maid at The Virgil. Maria reveals she already knows that Satanic sacrifices occur at The Virgil. She explains that, after Asia left her with their father, Maria eventually became a motel housekeeper who escaped another exploitive situation by getting a job at The Virgil.

Asia tells her sister she is there to rescue her, but Maria accuses Asia of abandoning her and says The Virgil is her new home now. Their argument culminates in Asia throwing a punch that knocks out Maria.

Sharon’s eyeball crawls through the shaft system to spy on Asia, Ray, and Maria. Asia crushes Sharon’s eyeball in her hand when she finds it. Sharon’s headless body relays to Kevin that Asia found her sister.

Asia fires a shotgun blast that stops an attack by the two Steves. Carrying Maria, Asia and Ray flee from Lily, Kevin, and Bob. Ray holds off the trio so the sisters can escape to a kitchen through a dumb waiter. Bob finds Asia hiding in the kitchen. Maria rescues Asia by swinging an ax into Bob’s head.

With her husband tied to a chair, Lily questions Ray about his betrayal. Ray explains that he was comfortable killing bad people he believed deserved death when they started out decades ago, but he had a change of heart after they started sacrificing innocents. With her head starting to grow back, Sharon is tasked with guarding Ray while Lily mobilizes all of the residents and maids on every floor in the building to hunt Asia.

Cultists capture Maria. Asia lights an ax on fire and uses it to kill everyone holding her sister. The two women reunite in an apologetic embrace. Asia promises to never leave Maria.

The sisters escape to an elevator shaft. Bob chases after them. Asia and Maria climb their way up to another hallway, but they end up confronted by Lily and a large mob of cultists.

Realizing the cult needs her alive for their sacrifice, Asia threatens to jump to her death in the elevator shaft unless Lily lets Maria go. Lily reveals Maria pledged her soul to Satan to have her life spared. Isabelle Davison, the maid from Maria’s previous job that Asia impersonated, was supposed to be the sacrifice that would fulfill Maria’s pact. However, the situation became complicated since Asia took Isabelle’s place. Now if Maria doesn’t make a sacrifice, she will die.

Asia accidentally falls backward into the elevator shaft when the cultists approach her. Bob catches Asia by her ankle and hands her over to Lily. With the two Steves holding Asia captive, Lily stabs her in the stomach.

Lily escorts Asia, Ray, and the other cultists to a secret chamber to consult their leader, which turns out to be a large, sentient Pig’s Head on a pike. With a pen hanging from one of its ears, names written on the Pig’s Head indicate its flesh contains the list of devotees who possess immortality.

As punishment for his betrayal, a bloody tentacle dangling from the Pig’s Head wipes off Ray Woodhouse’s name. Threatened with death if she refuses, Lily is then forced to kill her husband.

To prove her devotion, the Pig’s Head commands Maria to kill her sister, which she seemingly agrees to. The Pig’s Head calls Maria forward to write her name on its head. Maria secretly writes Asia’s name instead, giving her sister immortality. After that, Maria shocks everyone by slitting her own throat. Before dying, Maria tells Asia, “Go f*ck them up.”

Asia uses a cleaver to slice off the portion of the Pig’s Head with her name on it. Asia puts that piece in her pocket.

As the wounds on her body spontaneously heal, Lily and the cultists realize Maria made her sister unkillable. Asia embarks on a deadly rampage, either maiming, restraining, or beheading Bob, Tall Steve and Small Steve, Kevin, and Sharon.

The Pig’s Head joins with Lily’s body for a brutal battle with Asia. The Pig’s Head mimics Maria’s voice to taunt Asia. Her rage renewed, Asia tears the head off of Lily. Asia then swings it into Lily, causing her to become impaled on the pig’s pike.

Asia puts the Pig’s Head on a rolling housekeeping cart, douses it in cleaning fluid, and sets it on fire. The names on the head melt away, causing all of the key cultists to lose their immortality and die from the wounds Asia inflicted. Asia then kicks the flaming cart into the elevator shaft, where it lands on Sophia and explodes. Finally, Asia gathers Maria’s body and carries her through stunned cultists to leave The Virgil.

Asia puts Maria’s body in the backseat of the P.I.’s waiting car. Asia notices her sister got a tattoo identical to the one she has. The P.I. is shocked when Maria suddenly comes back to life. Asia reveals she secretly rewrote Maria’s name over her own on the piece of the Pig’s Head. Asia reminds Maria of her promise to never leave her sister again. The three of them drive away as a fireball explodes through The Virgil’s roof.

Review:

Someone somewhere summed up “They Will Kill You” by calling it a combination of “Rosemary’s Baby” and “The Raid.” Maybe it was someone from the movie’s marketing who said that. Maybe it was mentioned on social media, or the quote came from a critic. It could have been anyone really, because the premise of a fierce fighter having to bloodily battle her way through an upscale New York building that secretly houses Satanists makes the comparison pretty clear.

The setup is so straightforward, a synopsis could be left at that “it’s like” elevator pitch. To put a little more skin on those bones though, one could alternately add that the motivation behind this mash-up is a determined woman is searching for the younger sister she was separated from ten years ago, and that search leads her into a nest of immortal devil worshippers who make human sacrifices in exchange for the ability to resurrect and regenerate body parts.

Reminiscent of how Zack Snyder’s “Sucker Punch” felt like a slim script was scraped up to slap over a special effects showcase instead of SFX servicing a story, “They Will Kill You” plays less like a fully-fleshed feature and more like a demo reel for director Kirill Sokolov and cinematographer Isaac Bauman to show off abilities to stage stunts and come up with creative camera movements. Pulling classic conceits out of various filmmaking periods, the movie makes martial arts action and swordplay spectacles out of sudden zooms, acrobatic stuntpeople getting yanked across long distances by invisible wires, some decent fight choreography, some subpar fight choreography, and some surprisingly sketchy digital effects for a multimillion-dollar production.

Not that “They Will Kill You” ever intends to accurately simulate reality. The movie gets away with huge heaps of graphic uber-violence by purposely making it fancifully fantastical. Impossible amounts of blood burst in bright red sprays. Severed limbs and decapitated heads land on a quality level that drifts between Rick Baker realism and Spirit Halloween clearance item. These wafts of cheesiness also act as excuses to let rough-around-the-edges CGI wriggle off the hook a little bit, though they don’t entirely forgive more aggravating inclusions like Patricia Arquette giving her villainous cult leader a come-and-go Irish accent that could only sound worse if she said, “Remember to eat your Lucky Charms.”

The only thing more inconsistent than Arquette’s bizarre brogue is the movie’s spotty stylization. When it wants to, “They Will Kill You” turns all dials to 10 for frenzied faceoffs featuring flaming axes, faces obliterated by shotgun blasts, and the squirm of someone having to pull free a hand that’s been pinned to a wall. Other times, scenes settle for routine blocking that sits like plain oil on top of the shallow water of scattered comic book craziness. Trying to be bonkers amidst a lot of basicness also leads to moments that go too far over the top by trying to be cheeky for the emoji era.

Set decoration stays on point at least. The building where the brawling bonanza takes place, The Virgil, gets appropriately decked out in the telltale Satanic signs of deep reds and deeper blacks that make rooms elegant yet somehow sinister at the same time. The Virgil very much feels like The Bramford 2.0, and the film’s makers might even be hiding “They Will Kill You” as a secret “Rosemary’s Baby” spinoff by additionally giving Arquette’s character the last name Woodhouse.

“They Will Kill You” undoubtedly sounded funnier and more fun on paper than it ends up being. On top of the obvious influences it already cribs from, the movie’s emotional heartbeat hinges on the overdone trope of an estranged sibling who feels “abandoned” despite uncontrollable consequences causing the family’s rift, which only adds to the film’s feeling of being Frankensteined from a smorgasbord of repurposed ideas.

“They Will Kill You” makes me wish there were a TV anthology series where a movie made in this manner would be more at home. Such a large-scale project would be too cost prohibitive to make sense as an hour-long episode with commercials, but a shorter format like that would keep the concept from running so long in the tooth or having to fill 90+ minutes with redundant fights and monotonous pauses. How much anyone notices how thin “They Will Kill You” gets stretched directly corresponds to how much that person can consistently synch with Zazie Beetz continually gritting her teeth while kicking copious ass.

Mildly more amused by the movie than I was, my girlfriend countered my unenthusiastic shrug by responding, “I don’t know, it was something to watch.” That doesn’t sound like an effusive endorsement either, although it’s probably consistent with the most baseline reaction many will have to “They Will Kill You.”

Review Score: 55

Apr 30, 2026

THEY WILL KILL YOU (2026)

“They Will Kill You” plays less like a fully-fleshed feature and more like a demo reel for staging stunts and coming up with creative camera movements.