They Will Kill You

After answering a cryptic ad to be a housekeeper at an exclusive NYC building, a young woman finds herself trapped and fighting for her life.

I had a couple of concerns going into this film.

One, obviously this looks like it’s basically just a rehash of Ready Or Not. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Lord knows we have a never-ending supply of John Wick rip-offs now, some for good and some for ill, the problem is, once the trend starts, like new cars depreciating in value the moment they leave the lot, all these copies of a copy of a copy are immediately lesser from the start, and worse, begin to fade even more the longer things go on, so it's really a question of when that fading starts in ernest. Now? Later? Soon? I don't know.

Either way, that could be an issue here.

My other initial concern was that, while this movie was directed by Kirill Sokolov, and written by Kirill Sokolov and Alex Litvak, it was produced by the brother and sister team of Andy and Barbara Muschietti. They’re the people responsible for the recent It movie adaptations, as well as the spin-off show, Welcome to Derry, which are all slickly produced, really good looking, well-made pieces of shit, and for a whole slew of reasons too. And they’re not little reasons either.

In a nutshell, my main takeaway from watching the two It films, and Welcome to Derry—which I didn’t finished—was that Andy and Barbara are both very familiar with Stephen King’s work. I'd bet they’ve read It several times. But from watching this stuff, it’s pretty obvious that they didn’t understand it at all. They didn’t quite get the rules of the monster, or how or why it does things. I feel like the House on Neibolt Street is a good example, and the way it’s malignancy was overdone in all the wrong ways. Plus, they also clearly didn’t quite understand the setting, and the differences in pop culture between eras, or the differences in how people, and kids especially, talked in the 1950s versus the 1980s, or why the nuances are important, and why the original eras were important for the story, tying directly into events of the story, and how updating those eras should've changed things fundamentally. A big part of this is clearly due to the fact that the Muschietti's are from Argentina, not America, so there’s an obvious cultural disconnect there, which is a problem because above all else, the story of It is 100% an American-rooted story. I mean, that’s the entire heart of the story... childhood in America, and going home again as an adult in America.

But even worse than that...

Multiple adaptation choices they make in the It movies are not only weirdly arbitrary, but the only possible explanation for some of them is racism and sexism. And we’re talking about It here, a book written by Stephen King at the height of his power–an author who has always had his own issues with stereotypes and racial representation–with a story that “climaxes” with a bunch of 13 year olds having a gang-bang down in the sewers. I’m not claiming that the Muschiettis made those specific decisions directly due to racism and/or sexism, at least not consciously, or maybe they did, I don’t know, either way, there’s no other explanation for certain moments in the film—like how they took the Historian role away from Mike to give it to Ben—except for racism, or like how there’s no other explanation for changing the climax of the story—changing the final confrontation with the monster to be about saving the helpless hostage Bev—other than misogyny.

And Welcome to Derry was more of the same. The entire handling of the Black Spot is why I finally quit watching the show. The first episode’s opening, with the demon baby and the weird family in the car, was very much not right in a way that highlighted their clear lack of understanding when it came to the universe of the story, not to mention the monster’s whole “thing.” And all of that is without even mentioning the fact that the show was just a naked, ill-conceived attempt to create another Stranger Things-like show, and taking a square peg and just jamming it as hard as they could into a round hole. Although, to be fair the Pickled Dad monster was a really cool Monster moment.

My point is, seeing their involvement in this movie made me wary.

Still, I’m a big fan of Zazie Beetz. She was great in the show Atlanta, and Marvel definitely needs to bring her back as Domino, if for no other reason than the fact that her decision to play Domino with hairy armpits upset the Worst Kind of Nerds in the funniest way, so I’d love to see more of that. Along those same lines, rehash or not, I’m always down for a film that’s all about massacring a bunch of wealthy white assholes who are directly responsible for ruining the world, especially if it’s being done by Zazie Beetz in her underwear.

So fuck it, let’s roll the dice…

“When the poor give to the rich, the devil laughs.” - Benvenuto Cellini

Young Asia Reaves and her sister, Maria, flee from their abusive father, but he catches up to them the road. Asia ends up shooting him, but doesn’t kill him, and is arrested, which means that Maria is forced to return home with their father.

10 years later… fresh out of jail, Asia arrives on a dark and stormy night on the doorstep of The Virgil, an old and very exclusive high-rise building in New York City. She is greeted by the building manager, a woman named Lily Woodhouse. Asia gives a fake name, explaining that she is the new maid. As Lily shows Asia to the staff quarters, she explains that the Virgil is over 100 years old.

That night, while Asia is sleeping in her room, several of the Virgil’s residents break in and attack her. They are masked and robed, and make mention of Asia being a sacrifice for something. They are shocked to discover Asia is well-armed and more than capable of defending herself.

Soon enough, she has killed all of her assailants.

In the immediate aftermath of the fight, Asia confronts Lily, who is weirdly unperturbed, and we find out that the actual reason Asia has come here to The Virgil is not because of a possible job opening, but because Maria, her long-lost sister, already works here as a maid.

Unfortunately, that’s when Asia's dead attackers all resurrect.

What follows is a gory and prolonged fight throughout the building, between Asia and the myriad residents and staff of The Virgil, all of whom are devoted members of a satanic cult, who, as a result of which, can’t be killed, specifically because they all made human sacrifices to satan in exchange for immortality. Despite this, Asia does her bad-ass motherfucking utmost to keep herself and her sister alive.

The problem is, Maria is completely aware of what is happening at The Virgil and she’s actually just fine with it. In fact, she doesn’t want to leave.

Maria explains that, after their father died from cancer, she worked a series of shitty jobs before she was hired on at The Virgil. And while it's true that she was initially meant to be a sacrifice, she was spared when the maid who was meant to sacrifice her, so that she would be able to join the immortal family, got caught stealing and was killed for it. This sudden opening allowed Maria to stay on and work towards eventually getting the chance to join the family herself, and now, not only does she enjoy a safe and comfortable life within the building, tonight is her big induction night, meaning that tonight is the night that Maria is supposed to do her big sacrifice. Which also means that Asia is the person who Maria is supposed to sacrifice, or at least, the woman whose identity Asia took, in order to infiltrate the building, was.

Obviously, this is an issue between the sisters…

The bloody battles continue until the girls try to make it to the roof, in order to access the fire escape, but instead find themselves trapped on the top floor. Now cornered, the cultists summon Satan, who then possesses the severed head of a pig that the cultists have stored in the refridgerated penthouse. It turns out, the ritual is... the family writes their names upon the pig’s head when making their sacrifice, thus ensuring their immortality. But if for whatever reason a name is erased, that person is suddenly mortal again.

Thus armed with a clear understanding of the game’s rules, more fighting ensues, culminating in Asia fighting Lily, who is possessed by Satan, and so she is wearing the severed pig head...

They Will Kill You has some classic exploitation vibes, but it's definitely one where it's maybe all a bit too deliberate with them. This a big-time exploitation film fan’s version of an exploitation movie. Style and tone-wise, it’s basically Ready Or Not meets Drag Me To Hell meets Kill Bill, all for a myriad of reasons, not the least of which is during one part, one man slowly licks our largely barefoot heroine’s bare foot while she’s sleeping.

This is a film—with its clearly evil, largely white upper class living on the upper floors, with its largely POC staff serving their every needs while living on the lower floor, some of whom are more than willing to betray themselves and their people for the promise of being allowed to move on up—that clearly wears its metaphors on its sleeve. Classism. Racism. Colonialism. It’s basically about all of the various evils of white devils, and how the only way to address those evils in a permanent way. But don’t be fooled, it doesn’t have anything too deep to say about any of it, and I’m going to blame the deliberately tone deaf “I don’t see color” attitude that permeates those obvious metaphors, muddying their waters into meaninglessness, on the Muschiettis, as it all seems totally in line with their complete unwillingness, or plain old inability, to understand racial issues in America.

That said, everything to do with the pig head was a pretty fun sequence.

But mostly, the occasional propulsive action sequence aside, the whole thing does get a little dull, and more than a little derivative as it’s mostly just killing the same people over and over. Although maybe there’s a metaphor there too… if you don’t take out the center of white America’s power for good, it’s just going to be the same fucking problems over and over and over, again and again and again.

Plus, this film has that thing that I now think of the Netflix style of filmmaking, that ”Easy Reader” style of cinema, I had pointed out to me after watching The Rip, that thing where you reiterate plot points three or four times during the film, because people are slow and dumb and probably on their phone, and the end result is that it makes obvious and mediocre movies terrible and terdious. The film does this throughout, but the worst example is during the climax, where Asia’s big twist to beat the bad guys at their own game is revealed, and after it’s revealed, Lily very clearly and directly shouts out in simple terms exactly what just happened in order to explain it to all the dunderheads and dipshits with no media literacy, and even less of an attention span, in the audience, and it’s so fucking bad. This happens throughout the film, and each time it does, it just drags the story to a halt.

Still, I love Zazie Beetz. Whether, slicing though cultists in her underwear, deservedly blasting bad guys in the face with a shotgun, or chopping through a dark room filled with satanists with only a flaming axe to light her way, she really is a fantastic action hero, and is the entire reason that this not-that-great film might still be a really fun midnight movie with the right crowd. So, in the end, They Will Kill You is not great, and it's not good, but it's good enough, I guess.

Again, this is one of those films that is… fine.