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Summer jobs, like any kind of temporary employment, can be rough. You show up on your first day of work, you don’t know anybody, and you don’t know if it’s going to turn into a long term thing. And if it’s your first day as a maid at the Virgil, an exclusive Manhattan co-op, you’re a mix of nervous and excited. You’re on the precipice of something new, maybe even a new chapter in your life. Things are changing, you have new opportunities, you’re about to be attacked in the middle of the night for use as a sacrificial lamb in a dark ritual. Summer fun may be coming to an end soon, but that doesn’t mean these last few days are just for the kids. Let’s get into 2026’s They Will Kill You.
We start ten years ago, with a young woman and her little sister on the run from their abusive father. So close to getting away, their father finds them and an altercation occurs in the parking lot of a gas station in which she ends up shooting her father. The police arrive, she runs. After all, she’s young and she’s Black and she just shot a white guy. Cops have come out blasting for far less than that, so I understand the impulse to run. Now, she’s starting a job as a maid at the Virgil and it’s her first day. She tells them her name is Isabelle and they show her to her room and give her a quick onboarding. Isabelle, played by Zazie Beetz (Atlanta, Deadpool 2), tries to go to sleep and get ready for her first full day, missing the chilling fog-activated message left on her bathroom mirror. It simply said “They will kill you”. Unfortunately, writing in a steam-based medium rarely leads to permanence, so it’s an easy message to miss. But in the middle of the night, she’s visited by a masked and hooded figure. And then another. And then another. It turns out the whole place is designed to be a death trap; if you’re the odd one out, anyway. For those holding the keys, well, things are very different for them. It’s a playground.
What follows is a bloody, breathless fight for survival, because it turns out that Isabelle isn’t exactly who she seems to be. Which, to be fair, just about no one in this movie is who they seem to be, so I think it’s okay that she fudged a few details on her CV. After 10 years in prison, who can blame her? But no, Isabelle is no mere sacrificial lamb. No, no, this lamb’s got chops. And by chops, I mean she’s pretty damn handy with sharp objects.
The Virgil is an elaborate maze of dangers around every corner, designed very specifically to keep people like Isabelle from escaping. But they never really expected one of their tributes to start fighting back. But it turns out that Isabelle is much better with a machete than she is with a feather duster, so this is when things start to get interesting. Hemoglobin starts spraying like a fountain and the night starts to go in a direction that nobody involved thought it would; not Isabelle, not the residents of the Virgil. Creepy apartment buildings are getting their moment in the sun, it seems. I’ve still not forgiven Netflix for cancelling Archive 81 and whatever ABC Family is called now (Freeform, I think) had a 2023 show The Watchful Eye. I suppose Only Murders in the Building counts as well, but it’s thriving. Perhaps it’s hard for a series to survive, but as a movie, you can get that hard, pulse-pounding action and keep it going for the duration of the movie without tiring the audience out or getting too bogged down in the lore and world-building.
They Will Kill You isn’t about the writing or the acting, but that’s not to say that there aren’t good acting performances in here. As over the top as some of the acting might be, it’s in fitting with the whole conceit of the film and it all works just fine. Zazie Beetz is a talented actress and manages her role well, and it’s also the meatiest role in the film. The whole experience of the movie hinges on Beetz’s acting and her emotions in the moment are palpable. The residents of the Virgil are played by Tom Felton (Fackham Hall, The Flash), Heather Graham (The Hangover, Arrested Development) playing very much against type, and Patricia Arquette (Severance, Medium), who has the biggest role of the antagonists. Don’t get me wrong, she’s a chilling presence on screen and has been proving that since her role as Harmony Cobel in Severance, but, oh boy, was I distracted by her ever-changing accent. I know change is a constant in life and we’re meant to go with the flow and roll with the punches, but I didn’t think that applied to accents. I think she’s meant to be playing Irish, which seemed to be the dominant accent of the movie, but she also, at times, sounded British, southern American, and at one point I’m almost certain I heard a slight Dutch accent. It’s a tad bit off-putting in the scenes where there’s a lot of dialogue, but luckily for the majority of the movie, you’re just in for some bloody, endless, over-the-top fun.
And I do mean bloody; They Will Kill You definitely earns its R rating. Generally speaking, gore in movies does nothing for me. It usually doesn’t add anything to a movie for me unless it’s done poignantly, but it has to be fairly gross and truly excessive for me to wince at it and I don’t care for body horror. So while this movie’s level of gore doesn’t bother me, I feel like I should give a warning. It’s not a strictly scary movie as far as horror goes, though the first act does have some genuinely creepy moments, the tension is lifted largely in the second act by the sheer amount of action and frequent dark comic relief. If you thought Abigail was bloody, They Will Kill You takes it to another level and injects some body horror to it. It never did quite reach the level of bothering me, but I would recommend some caution over this movie if that’s not your thing. The entire second and third acts of the movie are spent covered in blood and viscera, so consider yourself warned.
Stylistically, They Will Kill You is very striking. There are moments where it feels eerily like I’m watching a Wes Anderson film; ornate gothic settings that feel out of place in the modern world, characters moving through static spaces, spaces moving around static characters, and of course, some of that lovely symmetrical shot framing that Anderson is so well known for. But then things shift out of a Wes Anderson film and into a Tarantino one, but with less focus on misogyny, women’s feet, and white people casually using the N-word. They Will Kill You marries these two very dichotomous styles really well, lending a surreality to the proceedings without the pretense or baggage that comes with it. Director Kirill Sokolov does a commendable job of paying homage to his influences without feeling like a copy by comparison, especially considering this is only his third feature film and the first one in English for American audiences. Apparently, he lists his influences as The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Evil Dead 2, and Kill Bill, which, well, is evident when you watch the movie. None of that takes away from how good the movie feels to watch; it just feels like it flows naturally visually and the storytelling, while not complicated, is aided by the strange combination of highly stylized shots. As a film nerd, it’s a fun movie to watch.
And if you’re a normal, well-adjusted person who lives primarily in the real world, it’s also very fun to watch. If you like to sit down and watch a movie that entertains you for 94 minutes of nearly nonstop action, They Will Kill You is undoubtedly something worth checking out. It’s not earth-shattering, it’s not groundbreaking, and it’s unlikely to be a movie that blows you away. But summer fun isn’t about that. The bad guys are really bad, the good guys are on the path to redemption, and there’s a lot of hacking and slashing in between. If chaotic and bloody sounds like fun to you, They Will Kill You is right up your alley. That’s not to say there isn’t anything lurking beneath the surface, but I wouldn’t go into this movie particularly looking for depth of storytelling. I don’t think it will touch you emotionally the way that Abigail could in moments, but that’s not a negative. Sometimes you don’t want watch a 2 hour long or longer movie that makes you feel all the feelings. Sometimes you just want a route one, over-the-plate action-horror comedy with a straightforward story. So yes, it lacks depth, but that’s kind of the point. There is something to be said about redemption, yes, family, yes, and even a commentary on how out of touch with humanity the ultra-rich are, but that’s hardly the point of They Will Kill You. The point is to entertain you for about an hour and a half, and I can say fairly confidently that it’s mission accomplished. The film also has a great soundtrack, with eclectic song choices that span a variety of genres. I don’t think I’ve watched a film and been as into its soundtrack since I saw Birds of Prey or Into the Spider-Verse (well, Yesterday’s all Beatles soundtrack is compelling too, but I think that’s kind of cheating, since it is a movie about the Beatles’ music). While They Will Kill You only boasts a 65% RT score, it’s an insane ride that doesn’t overstay its welcome thanks to that short runtime; had it been a 2+ hour epic, it most definitely would have worn thin, but the credits roll before you have a chance to get worn out by the action and just in time for you to catch your breath. They Will Kill You is rated R and runs 1 hour and 34 minutes, streaming exclusively on HBO Max.
