Recommendations of the Editorial team
The ultra-rich are not like you and me. They cozy up to corrupt governments and treat human rights like annoying obstacles. They buy traditional newspapers and throw billions into media companies to advance private political agendas. And they make deals with the devil in exchange for immortality and truly extraordinary New York real estate.
You don’t have to read the Epstein files cover to cover to realize that when it comes to the upper income percentile, casual sacrifice to the princes of darkness is hardly the most egregious thing one could imagine today. And you don’t have to secretly dream of an apartment in the Dakota – the apartment building from “Rosemary’s Baby” – to imagine New Yorkers joining satanic cults to secure a spot in an exclusive Manhattan condominium. Rent-controlled two-bedroom apartment at any price, folks.
This 1968 horror film by Roman Polanski casts a long shadow over “They Will Kill You” – here too there are unsuspecting victims, eccentric neighbors, hideous rituals and the landlord from hell. The same goes for “John Wick,” especially when it comes to the all-or-nothing set pieces. Zazie Beetz trained for months to pull off the truly breathtaking – and often jaw-cracking – fight sequences. And if every talented actor gets their fifteen minutes as an action star at some point, the “Atlanta” veteran truly deserves her appearance.
The half-forgotten ’70s trash masterpiece The Sentinel, a bunch of Eat the Rich satires, and lots of grindhouse programming from the old Forty-Deuce were also thrown into the pot – right down to imagery that could be described as an Instagram grindhouse filter. But by far the most dominant influence – even without the eye-catching shots of Beetz’s bare feet – is a certain Tarantino opus from the beginning of the 21st century. A more apt title for this exploitation mixtape might have been “They Will Kill-Bill You.”
It’s not a crime to copy the director who first turned modern audiences on to postmodern genre exercises – otherwise half the generation of filmmakers from the 1990s would be behind bars. But the Tarantino fetish is so pronounced in the work of Russian director Kirill Sokolov that every quick zoom and every shock moment in the score seems less like an adrenaline rush and more like an elbow nudge: Look, we know the reference. Mind you, no one here turns up their noses when someone fights pig-masked henchmen with a flaming ax in a dark ballroom. It’s just that the vehicle that transports you from one showstopper duel to the next seems so derivative that even Beetz’s brilliant brawling orgies can’t quite dispel the impression of reheated fast food.
Asia Reaves on a quest for revenge
Her heroine is called Asia Reaves – a hardened survivor of a violent home and a ten-year prison sentence. The goal: to find her younger sister Maria, with whom she lost contact during her time in prison. The location of said sister: The Virgil, a chic residential complex somewhere in upper Manhattan, the preferred address of the absolute elite. The now grown-up Maria (Myha’la from “Industry”) works there as a housemaid. Asia also got a job under false pretenses to free her.
The biggest obstacle? The inhabitants of Virgil apparently worship the Horned One, and their master demands a sacrifice – and who should the sacrificial lamb be? Asia has prepared: a sawed-off shotgun, a sword, and her own well-honed skills at taking down multiple enemies at once. But through a series of twists and turns that would be too confusing to unravel here even without a spoiler scruple, the Reaves sisters’ pursuers cannot be so easily eliminated. So they must battle an army of cult members, led by the building’s caretaker (Patricia Arquette, struggling and occasionally victorious with an Irish accent), and find a way to escape the largely locked building – one dangerous floor at a time.
For anyone who expects more from their B-movies than an RPG video game reenactment, this is bad news. For anyone who just wants to revel in the glory of Zazie Beetz’s stabbing, shooting, kicking, knocking down, running, jumping and enacting revenge en masse, it’s a delight. As is well known, “Kill Bill” was as much a love letter to its star as it was a declaration of love to the entire exploitation cinema spectrum. And while Sokolov and his co-writer Alex Litvak aren’t in the mood for grindhouse nostalgia, they’ve written a similar Valentine’s Day poem for their female lead. If nothing else: “They Will Kill You” is a successful proof of concept for establishing Beetz as a bankable headliner for future beating orgies. Her supporting appearance in Deadpool 2 hinted at her action qualities. This film confirms it with distinction.
Beetz carries the film
Is that enough to keep “Kill” alive except for die-hard Beetz fans? Well, if you don’t mind the déjà vu and the drive-by class commentary. (That many of the non-white employees at the Virgil were drawn into their employers’ corrupt rituals out of sheer need for survival is a nice but massively underdeveloped detail; but the sight of two women of color fighting their way through a pale aristocracy that wants to kill them says enough in itself anyway.) Beetz deserves a better, more solid stage – and we, the fans of exploitation films, who love her violent, exhilarating, bloody Spice up choreography with more than just cheap hits of dopamine, too. The downside: That’s exactly why she could still get this stage. May a thousand Zazie-led screen massacres flourish.
