They Will Kill You (2026) Review

Sometimes an actor’s entire career pivots on a single film. Bruce Willis transformed from the wise-cracking charmer of ‘Moonlighting’ into a full-blown action icon with ‘Die Hard’, while Liam Neeson unexpectedly carved out a second life as a tough-as-nails leading man after ‘Taken.’ Although she made ‘Æon Flux,’ years before, Charlize Theron stunned audiences as the badass Furiosa in ‘Mad Max: Fury Road,’ and Bob Odenkirk rewrote expectations with ‘Nobody’, revealing a steely physicality that had been hiding in plain sight.

With Kirill Sokolov’s ‘They Will Kill You’, Zazie Beetz might be on the brink of a similar reinvention. An action-horror spectacular, it follows Beetz’s Asia Reeves as she infiltrates The Virgil, an opulent New York high-rise, in search of her missing sister, Maria. Soon, she discovers that the building’s elite residents are hiding something far darker than money or influence- and that the devil is very much in the details.

Written by Sokolov and Alex Litvak, it is a bloody blast- as if Sam Raimi and Quentin Tarantino had a cinematic love-child. Combining the propulsive style and pacing of ‘Kill Bill Volume I & II’ with the gloriously over-the-top comedic gore of the ‘Evil Dead’ franchise, and a dash of ‘Rosemary’s Baby’, the film delivers violent set-pieces with gleeful abandon. However, beneath the blood and guts, there are faint traces of something deeper: the building’s workers are almost entirely people of colour, while its pampered residents are uniformly WASPish- a class and racial divide Sokolov is not interested in examining in any meaningful way. His film never pauses long enough to explore these dynamics.

In fact, the narrative itself is really little more than a framework designed to hold the action sequences together. Dialogue is quite stilted, and the characterisation rarely rises above familiar archetypes. In a film this hyper-stylised, though, nuance isn’t really the priority. The story rockets forward at a breathless pace, and Sokolov creates an intriguing, grotesque little world- a narrative skeleton sturdy enough to support the deliriously inventive mayhem he unleashes.

The film is a thrill-ride of guts and gore, with geysers of blood erupting across the screen and limbs cartwheeling through the air. The fight scenes fuse the bruising physical athleticism of a Jackie Chan brawl with the anarchic, splatter-happy imagination of Yoshihiro Nishimura- a kind of hyper-violent slapstick, bone-crunching and darkly comic, where every gag is soaked in crimson.

Asia absorbs punishment, stumbles, improvises and claws her way forward on grit as much as skill, with the scrappy charm and resilience of a ‘Lady Snowblood’-style heroine. While the narrative may be clichéd and humdrum, the action is truly electrifying. Choreography and special effects are superb, Sokolov shooting the fights in smooth, unbroken takes- eschewing the quick-cut trickery used to disguise sluggish, less capable performers (cough-Steven Seagal-cough). It’s visceral, inventive, positively exhilarating.

Isaac Bauman’s cinematography bathes the Virgil in lurid colour and deep shadow, evoking the heightened, operatic stylisation of Dario Argento. His camera glides through its corridors with a restless, immersive fluidity, favouring long, continuous takes, framing the action with clarity and precision. Jeremy Reed’s production design transforms the building into a grotesquely opulent labyrinth of wealth, debauchery and gore.

The sound design is just as exaggerated; every crack of bone, slash of skin and burst of violence landing with sickening emphasis. Further, Luke Doolan’s editing maintains a relentless rhythm, giving the film a breathless momentum. Additionally, music is deftly integrated- needle drops punctuating the chaos with a dark sense of irony- while Carlos Rafael Rivera’s original score surges confidently beneath it all.

Zazie Beetz is the magnetic core around which Sokolov’s madness spins, delivering a fierce, tightly controlled performance. Like Michelle Yeoh or Keanu Reeves in their most physically committed roles, she understands how to make action legible, expressive and emotionally coherent, even in the midst of chaos. The script gives her little original in the way of character development, but she compensates through sheer physical precision and commitment, making Asia compelling even when the writing does not. If ‘They Will Kill You’ marks a new phase in Beetz’s career, it’s one forged in blood, sweat and sheer force of will. It is entirely conceivable that she could become the next great action star.

The supporting cast are uniformly committed to the film’s heightened tone. Patricia Arquette leads the villainy as sinister building manager Lily Woodhouse, offering a performance of calculated eccentricity. Her off-kilter accent might hover uneasily somewhere between Dutch, Newfoundland and Northern Irish, but she still shapes the character into a figure of absurd menace, leaning fully into the role’s theatricality.

Tom Felton and Heather Graham appear to be having a great deal of fun as two of her underlings, embracing the film’s broader, cartoonish register, while Myha’la brings welcome emotional clarity and weight to the role of Asia’s sister, Maria. In a voice-role as the puppet master of sorts, James Remar is animalistically devilish, while Paterson Joseph rounds things out as Lily’s conflicted husband Ray, bringing to proceedings a quieter note of humanity.

Kirill Sokolov’s ‘They Will Kill You’ is a film built on momentum, excess and sheer sensory overload, where story takes a back seat to spectacle at every turn. That approach won’t be for everyone, but it’s hard to deny its conviction. Atmospheric, well-edited and stirringly scored, it is brash, hyper-stylised and frequently ridiculous, though also killer entertainment. With visceral fight sequences and a powerful central performance from Zazie Beetz, ‘They Will Kill You’ is ruddy, bloody deadly.