They Will Kill You (2026) - Zazie Beetz Fights Immortal Pig - REVIEW
They Will Kill You is exactly the kind of movie where whoever came up with the setup was having a lot of Tarantino and Kill Bill in their minds because turning a Manhattan high rise into a satanic playground for immortality obsessed cultists is the kind of idea you either fully commit to or completely waste, and this one commits, well the pig was hilarious and ridiculous at the same time with some mind blowing ideas like writting your name on its skin and then you are immortal. Asia Reaves is out of prison and hunting for her missing sister Maria, she lands a housekeeping gig at a building called The Virgil, and from the second the front doors lock behind her and superintendent Lilith Woodhouse is all over her ass, so you know this woman just walked into something she is absolutely not ready for. The building has been around since 1923 and what the residents have been running inside it since day one makes your average cult look like a book club, they even say that immortality gets boring so they got to live to the max no hold back, we are talking immortality through human sacrifice, names kept on a list, a community of people who have been giving up souls so they never have to die and the movie goes hard into all of it without any other idea in mind, you are watching a full on horror gory comedy where the blood budget was clearly not a concern for anybody, gallons from the start.
- IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt31728330/
- Platform: PRIME VIDEO
Zazie Beetz is the engine that keeps this whole machine from flying apart, because the movie throws an insane amount of chaos at Asia and Beetz just eats all of it without flinching, you buy her completely as someone who spent a decade in prison and came out knowing exactly how to hurt people, just look at how she is packing right from the start and the way she moves through the fight scenes feels less like movie choreography and more like someone who has spent years surviving environments where violence was just Tuesday. The supporting cast is having an absolute blast been just that a supporting cast because there is noone on this movie that can get a hold of Asia if its not through numbers. Heather Graham goes full unhinged that is going to make you laugh out loud at least more than twice and Patricia Arquette as Lilith Woodhouse is exactly the kind of villain energy this movie needed because she plays the whole thing with this calm sinister authority that makes her terrifying even when she is just standing in a hallway doing nothing. The practical effects are cool and hilarious just as I like them, there is this sequence where Asia wraps a rag around an axe to make a torch in the dark dining room that looked so good because they just keep coming at her and all you see is her face light up and then two seconds later someone is reattaching their own limbs and when they did that the first time I thought they were vampires. David Howard Thornton does not get enough credit here either because his presence adds a lot of lets call it theatrical insanity that fits the movie perfectly, and the scene where Asia deals with Kevin after decapitating him and the guy just keeps walking around holding his own head was a hold up moment, wait a minute, tf is going on, again this is just so Kill Bill but with that ridiculous touch instead of dramatic cinematic style.
Now, I have to be real because if I gave Hokum a 6.5 I have to do the same with this one because not everything is golden here, there is a moment where the joke gets old, the middle section drags and its frustrating, the movie spends too much time on the backstory of Ray Woodhouse and his history with Lilith going back a hundred years when it should have been using that time to show us more of the building, almost like they just gave us the text pages and no pictures, because they set up these different floors dedicated to different vices and then just completely abandon the idea like they forgot they mentioned it. The sex floor gets a passing reference and then nothing, no exploration, just this sugarcoted concept that disappears and for a movie this committed to chaos that felt like a real missed opportunity because I was expecting for other levels to be worst. Some of the kills start to feel repetitive once you realize none of these jerks stay dead and they can just put themselves back together indefinitely and what starts as a cool idea becomes a pacing problem because their is no way out and stop feeling real when every enemy you chop up just reassembles and comes right back at you. The moment where the cult signs names on a pig head contract to maintain their immortality crosses a line from dark comedy into something that almost feels like self parody, also there were not enough space and names on that pig head compare to the crew they were rolling with at the building, and there are scenes in the second half where the movie seems unsure if it wants to be Evil Dead or something more grounded and that indecision costs it some momentum right when it needs to keep pushing forward.
At the end I actually didnt took it as a horror movie but more like those movies where the protagonist had this infinite luck that made every situation survivable no matter how ridiculous and the issue with that is you stop feeling any real danger for Asia even when the situation is clearly insane because she is just too capable at all times and the movie never makes you actually worried she is going to lose, they never going to kill her, her sister die for a min and Asia was still kicking. There is a flashback with the sisters at a convenience store that is supposed to add some emotional weight and remind you why Asia fought her way through all of this and the moment hits good enough at first but then the movie pivots straight back into the pig head madness before it has time to stick so the emotional scenes feel thin because they do not get enough room to breathe between the gory sequences. The thing about movies like this is they work best when you are completely in the moment and the comedy and horror are hitting at the same rhythm, but there are parts of the movie where They Will Kill You loses that balance and you feel like they were seperate moments that do not belong to the same story, particularly in the second half when it becomes clear the script was more interested in escalating the spectacle than figuring out how to land the story with any kind of satisfaction of the hero making it out of there with her syster.
The ending throws everything at the wall in the devil layer with a stained glass shadow coming to life and a final showdown between Asia and a pig masked Lilith Woodhouse and there was this moment where the put so much effor how the pig head got attach to Lilith that I though it was getting merge with her body to never come appart almost like a parasite but then Asia pick the head so easy off here so I was like tf just happen? all that detail and effor for nothing?. The way they came up to work around the contract deal to get both Asia and her syster out of there felt pretty clever and didnt felt like they were cheating, they just outsmart everyone even the devil on that pig head. The cinematography and the tracking shots through that building are solid work, I bet they had lots of cameras going on rails on a hall because someone clearly put a lot of craft into making The Virgil feel like a real place with a real history even when the story lack details and context but I guess it was enough to push the satanic building concept. I'm giving this movie a 6.5/10 for this one because it has enough energy and commitment from its cast to be worth watching on a night when you want something loud and bloody and not particularly interested in making you think too hard or feel scared. Zazie Beetz alone is reason enough to give it a shot, just go in knowing the second half runs out of gas a little as get concept of the building and people inside loose its effect and the concept is bigger than what the movie delivers.
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