Zazie Beetz Will F*^% You Up In ‘They Will Kill You’

“They Will Kill You” is the latest mish-mash blood-drenched horror-exaggerated action-comedy from director Kirill Sokolov, starring Zazie Beetz, Heather Graham and Patricia Arquette. Beetz shoots frantic looks at her enemies and backflips through every floor of this downtown high-rise apartment building housing a wealthy collection of satanic worshipers as a launchpad to rescue her younger sister. Virgil is the name of the apartment building housing the upper-class satanists who are there to protect their wealth at all costs.

Zazie Beetz Is A One Chick Army

Asia makes her stance, purpose and fury well-known early on in the jugular-slicing, super-soaker arterial-spray heavy film. It’s almost as if Sokolov worked as a stunt director for a period of time and has always had a plethora of ideas for ridiculously gory action scenes using a variety of weapons and a scoop of Matrix-inspired slow motion scenes to write a flimsy script and characters around.

The strengths that shine through are the moments where it seems like the writers are going to take us deeper into the heritage of the Virgil and give substantial background on the characters that inhabit this Satanic Temple of sorts. Roy, Arquette’s hubby, played by Paterson Joseph, blesses us with a tidbit of the lore surrounding the white-collar housing community as he attempts to explain the orgy happening on one of the apartment building’s floors.

The Virgil’s Lore: A Missed Opportunity

Apparently, each floor represents a sin; this one is obviously lust. But that’s about as deep as the writers chose to go with some kind of explanation behind things here. Then it’s right back to flipping through the air in slow-motion and slicing satanic worshiping fools through until every corner of the room is dripping with blood.

Lily seems like she’s going to divulge some historical value early in this dumbed-down, meth-addicted distant cousin of Kill Bill, but all she comes out with is “Who the f*** are you?!” That’s around the time we learn next to nothing further about Asia, other than she’s pissed, she learned to scrap in jail and she’s here to get her sister back, who is played by Myha’la.

There are moments between the sisters once they’re reunited that amount to the creativity it takes to cut the camera, drop some aqua in their dry eyes, shove a half-baked screenplay in their hands, and yell at these poor girls, “Action!” All it amounts to is more half-hearted nonsense just taking up space until Sokolov gets to shoot more of his fantasy fight scenes he’s had on the back burner of his imagination for however long.

Story Stumbles, Beetz Shines

Here was a proper platform to tell an original story, even if it is a largely teenage-level horror-fantasy tale. You have the viewpoint of a leading lady (Zazie Beetz) who has had it with everyone on multiple levels, will go to extreme lengths for loved ones, carries whatever flaming double-edged weapon she can get her blood soaked mitts on with the skill of a samurai and an ancient devil worshipping cult that fully inhabits a massive upper class apartment building that should be steeped fathoms deep with historical fiction.

Instead, here is a Quentin Tarantino fan boy’s dream movie, filled with what he wanted to see more of in Mr. Tarantino’s films: an opening frame to a closing shot of nonstop decapitations, jugular-vein-spraying Tasmanian-devil gratuitous violence, and a bunch of cliché one-liners. That all being said, no one’s saying every movie should be some epic, deep J.R.R. Tolkien Lord of the Rings-esque tale. All we ask is that we don’t feel our IQs drop a point or 5 after we pay our price of admission, whether it’s streaming or in the cineplex.

Zazie Beetz trained for months, according to Rolling Stone’s David Fear’s recent article. I admire her for that and the grit she embedded deep throughout the movie; I am impressed, Ms. Zazie Beetz.