Review: They Will Kill You (2026) – Sam Raimi Meets Kill Bill in a Satanic Elevator of Death
Zazie Beetz leads a brutal, darkly funny, and wildly stylish ride that turns a familiar premise into one of the most entertaining festival screenings of the year.
At the premiere of They Will Kill You, I expected another film in the Ready or Not mold, another bloody chase built around a single character being hunted down at all costs. And I was not the only one. Even before the screening, there were doubts that the film might feel too familiar, maybe even too derivative to be worth seeing in a theater.
That would have been a big mistake.
Director Kirill Sokolov does not take a familiar premise just to repeat it. He uses it as a springboard for something much wilder, more stylish, and far more entertaining.
Asia Reaves takes a job as a cleaner in a mysterious New York building called Virgil. The place has been linked to a series of disappearances, its residents feel like a closed-off community built around dark rituals, and what begins as an ordinary work shift gradually turns into a brutal fight for survival.
Does that sound especially original? That is not really the point. What truly drives the film is its style. It reminded me of some older blaxploitation films, not only in the music, but in the camera movement, the rhythm of the scenes, and its overall ferocity. At the same time, there is something of Sam Raimi’s playful brutality in it, and something of Tarantino’s love of turning violence into something close to choreography. The most accurate description that came to mind after the screening was that it feels like Sam Raimi directing Kill Bill after several sleepless nights and deciding not to hold back on anything this time. Similar comparisons have appeared in international reviews as well, pointing to a mix of Raimi, Tarantino, grindhouse aesthetics, and that sense of delirious genre fun.
At SXSW, I did not experience bigger bursts of laughter or louder cheering for each new act of carnage. That was the film’s greatest strength. It is a movie built for the audience, one that knows exactly when to push the brutality, when to lean into black comedy, and when to simply let the room react. Some fellow critics stressed this too: the film works above all as a crowd-pleaser, one that plays best in a packed theater where every new escalation sparks laughter, screams, or applause.
A big part of that comes from Zazie Beetz. She brings energy, quick instinct, and the kind of presence that keeps the whole film together even when everything around her turns into a carnival of chaos. When the role calls for vulnerability, she delivers. When it shifts into action mode, she delivers again. And when the film moves into scenes balanced somewhere between absurdity, horror, and black comedy, she handles them without letting the momentum slip.
The supporting cast helps too. A demonic Patricia Arquette gives this kind of heightened material both authority and madness. Myha’la, Tom Felton, and Heather Graham help create a closed world with its own rules. Even though the whole thing is deliberately over the top, it never feels completely random. It has its own internal logic of insanity.
That does not mean the film is flawless. Critics who did not connect with it most often argue that after its explosive opening, it does not keep delivering as many surprises as the first stretch promises, and that some moments feel more like variations on familiar genre patterns than anything truly fresh. There are also fair complaints that the film sometimes leans more on style and spectacle than on deeper characterization or stronger emotional weight. That is a valid point. They Will Kill You is not a film that redefines horror or action-comedy. But it knows exactly what it wants to be, and at its best, it commits to that fully.
The film is also the first title released under Nocturna, the label launched at Skydance by siblings Andy and Barbara Muschietti, the duo behind films including Mama and It.
And if They Will Kill You was meant to show that Nocturna wants to bet on horror with a strong directorial signature and win audiences over through energy rather than sterile polish, then this is a very solid start.
The result is a film that not only exceeded my expectations, but ended up ranking among the biggest genre standouts of the entire SXSW. The premise may sound familiar, but the film uses it only as a launching point for something much more unhinged, playful, and stylish than its synopsis or trailer suggests. It played fantastically in a theater, and for me personally, it was one of the absolute highlights of the festival.
Rating: 9/10 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Action / Thriller
USA, 2026
Director: Kirill Sokolov
Writer: Alex Litvak, Kirill Sokolov
Cast: Zazie Beetz, Patricia Arquette, Heather Graham, Tom Felton, Myha’la, Paterson Joseph, Lindzay Naidoo a další
This review is part of my SXSW 2026 coverage from Austin, Texas. You can read more reviews, interviews, and festival coverage from SXSW 2026 in my South By Southwest 2026 section.
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