REVIEW:
It’s Tarantino meets Sam Raimi, no doubt about it. Specifically, it’s Kill Bill meets the Evil Dead 2. And that’s just in terms of style. In terms of story, throw in Ready Or Not, about a woman being hunted down inside a building by a cult of satan worshippers. That only difference is that instead of a mansion, it’s a hotel, and instead of a family doing the hunting, it’s now all the hotel employees. Splice those three movies together, and you get this one, which takes its influences and runs with them.
They Will Kill You is an absolute blast! That’s the simple truth. This movie has style and atmosphere and humor and choreography cranked up to eleven. Now,, let’s be clear..this is most definitely not a movie for everyone. It’s a very niche, specific type of movie that goes for a hard R. For example, the way blood shoots out like a geyser when a limb is cut off in the Kill Bill movies… that is all over this movie. And if you can find the humor in how ridiculous that is, then you just might be on board for this one. This is horror-action-comedy taken to the extreme. We’re talking about buckets of blood, but in more of a comedic way than a gross way.
This movie definitely knows what genre it’s playing in, and how to get all of the hallmarks of that genre right… Keep it to all one night, keep it all to one building, make sure there’s a rain storm raging outside. These staples go back to the Kurosawa movie, Rashomon (it was daytime, not nighttime there, but otherwise everything was the same.) Since then, they have been used by so many movies, from Clue to Identity. And yet, they never get old, and instead really contribute to the feel of the film and the atmosphere.
What works about They Will Kill You is the way it combines action with humor and oozes style. Now Kill Bill might be the most obvious reference, with its samurai wielding protagonist on a mission of vengeance, but there are Tarantino trademarks all over this. From the way our character talks tough after finishing a fight, to the sudden loud rap music choices as she walks down a hall, to the way blood spurts out of wounds like it is shooting out of a garden hose. Even the rapid fire zoom ins on characters faces or eyes, and the way the movie does flashbacks to reveal back stories on characters accompanied by title cards that announce what it is about to show…, all right out of the Tarantino playbook. And it’s all really cool, because even though we’ve seen it before in other movies, we’ve never seen it in this genre before. We’ve never seen it quite done like this.
The story is about Asia Reeves (Zazie Beatz,) who is on the run with her sister, from an abusive father. When the father catches up with them in a convenience store, in the opening scene, Reeves shoots him. And so she is arrested, leaving her sister in his care. This is her legitimately leaving her sister in a bad situation, as opposed to Ready or Not 2 which makes a point to explain that the younger sister was left with foster parents who were actually good to her. And yet she still acts betrayed. In They Will Kill You, we pick up with Reeves ten years later as she gets a job as a maid in the hotel on a dark and stormy night. She’s there to find her sister, whose last whereabouts were going into the hotel for work.
Patricia Arquette plays the hotel staff manager, and as an actress she’s never been better. Or more memorable. She dons a thick Irish accent and really commands the screen as she takes Reaves on a brief tour of the hotel and leads her to her room. That’s where Reaves plans to spend the night before continuing the tour in the morning. Only that night a group of pig-mask wearing killers break into her room and attack. And Reaves is ready.
We suddenly get the best fight in the movie as Reaves emerges from a closet fully armed. The camera work here is sensational as it tracks alongside characters while they’re fighting and whips back from time to time, allowing us to feel like we are really there, in the space with them. This movie definitely took notes from the way John Wick shoots action scenes, and it works. So does the use of computer effects and way they are married with practical effects so that nothing ever looks too fake even when you know it is. Computer effects are used only to enhance the choreography, the same way that director Matthew Vaughn uses turn in his Kingsman movies, and boy does it look cool. On top of that, each action scene features Reeves using a different weapon, which goes a long way. This is especially noticeable in a ballroom scene where she kicks ass while welding an axe while it is on fire.
While the action and way it is shot might be similar to John Wick, the tone of this movie hardly exists in the realistic world the way those movies do. This one is about the supernatural. There are tons of resurrections. Theres even a lengthy sequence involving a moving eyeball (an Evil Dead 2 reference.) It’s a blast.
This movie spares no expense when it comes to cool ideas. In fact, it does go a little too far with its ending, giving us a sort of guardian that feels like it’s out of a video game, as the final bad. Without giving it away, this character feels like a mutant out of a Ninja Turtles movie, more than a hotel horror splatterfest. There are definitely a few nit-picks here and there (like there’s a ballroom scene where characters run past Asia one at a time, each one hitting or pushing her, and one has to wonder why they weren’t stabbing her, to actually do some real damage,) but overall, this one is pretty cool. It gets all the staples of the genre down perfectly, and it seamlessly combines humor and action to give us a full, fun, and wildly entertaining experience.