They Will Kill You (2026) Review

It’s been a while since I’ve felt as thrilled by a movie as I did when watching Krill Sokolov’s new film about a woman infiltrating a satanic cult to find her missing sister. Full of high-octane action, it’s also a very current commentary on power, class and gender. Featuring a dynamic visual language and a script bursting with personality, this is a film that should be watched in theaters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqNFJUihSHg

Fans of subtlety might find the script to be heavy-handed (it begins with an epigraph by Benvenuto Cellini: “When the poor give to the rich, the devil laughs.”), but I’d argue that it’s reductive to say anything is universal with art, including the need for subtlety. I’m not even sure what a subtle version of an action film about a poor woman taking down a cult of rich, sadistic libertines would look like. Tonally, everything in this movie just works. The acting is turned up to an 11, and I think that’s an important note because it says a lot about this film’s influences. While many will make Kill Bill comparisons, I think a lot of the visual DNA onscreen comes from Hong Kong martial arts and action movies: the use of slow motion and crash zooms, the over-the-top acting, and a script that couldn’t be subtle if it tired. There’s also a lot to appreciate about the way this movie was shot.

Many action films have been ruined by fight choreography that is overly-sleek, but thankfully this isn’t one of them. Capturing the chaos one would expect in these scenes, characters are constantly stumbling or dropping their weapons, and the lead badass, Asia, gets hurt a lot, making the stakes feel real and giving her a layer of humanity. To accentuate this frantic atmosphere, the handheld camera whips and circles around the room. Cinematographer Isaac Bauman even plays with light, adding in tons of shadow to increase tension and create a sense of unrest. Because Asia and her sister, Maria, have to fight through several floors of the building before getting to safety, the structure of the story can sometimes feel repetitive, but overall the editing does a great job at quickening the pace when needed.

As the lead, Zazie Beets gives a performance that lands somewhere between 80’s Stallone and 90’s Chow Yun Fat, which is exactly the kind of energy this movie needed. I don’t know if she and her co-star, Myha’la, necessarily had the chemistry needed to pull of the more emotionally-weighty scenes between two estranged sisters, but the story is so propulsive we are pulled out of its more unsavory moments before they become odious. It was fun to see Heather Graham hamming it up as an immortal devil worshipping heiress, but to me Patricia Arquette and Paterson Joseph playing a couple torn apart by ennui and regret were the real emotional core of the film.

This film is chaotic, extremely violent and sometimes overly-blunt. That being said, I think it’s a perfect balm for the times we live in. Sometimes subtlety is the last thing you need, and for a post-Epstein Files America where people are growing in their class-consciousness, I think this movie can be one that really resonates with those who find it increasingly hard to ignore that there is something very wrong with this country. Filled with eye-popping action, entertaining performances and a fun story at its heart, you should watch They Will Kill You in theaters now!