If you’re looking for some killer real estate, might we suggest The Virgil, an exclusive, well-appointed building in New York City? It’s one of those century-old hotel-condos with great bones and spacious apartments, fully furnished. One drawback they might not mention on Zillow is all the murderous satanists.
The Virgil is the setting for most of the ambitious but ultimately cramped horror-comedy “They Will Kill You,” a wonderful vehicle for its star, Zazie Beetz, while not exactly fulfilling in either the horror or comedy modes. You might want your security deposit back.
Writer-director Kirill Sokolov borrows elements of Blaxploitation and apes cinematic techniques from Quentin Tarantino’s violent revenge fantasies to come up with a muddled movie that has a patina of satire, a smear of dread, a little camp and some surreal touches, like eyeballs that bounce around with agency.
Much of the underwhelming nature of “They Will Kill You” is its lack of ambition. It’s said the filmmakers used Dante’s “Inferno” as an inspiration for a building that would house on its floors each of the vices from the nine circles of hell — lust, gluttony, greed and so forth. They settled on two and so both initially widened the plot idea but then immediately stunted it.
Beetz’s Asia Reaves shows up at The Virgil — named after Dante’s guide — to locate her little sister, who we learn in a prologue got separated 10 years before. The sister may be inside as a maid for a group of satanists and she may have gotten in too deep.
Beetz is a revelation as a cleaver-wielding, close-combat boss lady who slices and dices her way through hordes of black-cloaked baddies, who we learn, unfortunately, don’t stay dead. “I’m sick of you killing me!” one tells her.
Sokolov leans into a kind of gimmick in which the victim of a disemboweling suddenly grows still and silent for a beat until sprays of blood shoot out from their various wounds like a fire hydrant. He’s also got slo-mos of assailants hanging in the air poised for murder, plenty of limbs cut off and shotgun booms. Costume designer Neil McClean fumbles the satanists’ cloaks, making them fussy and vaguely shiny, like art smocks for kindergarteners.
The cast also includes a great Myha’la as the sister, Tom Felton and Heather Graham as vengeful, evil satanists — are there any other kind? — and Patricia Arquette as the prim building manager with a terribly uneven Irish accent that incorporates everything from Lucky Charms sing-song to Belfast hardman.
There are extended chase scenes in tunnels and an inspired fight scene with a flaming ax but Sokolov can’t pull off the ending, a bizarre and deflating faceoff with Satan himself. The devil himself seems smaller than you’d expect.
“They Will Kill You” may remind you of the marriage between madcap, social satire and bloody mayhem from “Ready or Not” but it’s a warning of how hard that combo is to get correctly. (Our hero here at one point just explains the gore-fest with two words — “rich people” — as if that’s enough.) If you do decide to see it this weekend, come for the beatdowns but stay for the Beetz.
“They Will Kill You,” a Warner Bros. release in theaters Friday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for “strong bloody violence, gore, language and brief sexual content/nudity.” Running time: 94 minutes. One and a half stars out of four.
