They Will Kill You

Like John Wick, just without all the calmness and restraint, this blackly funny action-horror doesn’t come off the rails, but only because it’s barely on them in the first place. There’s a dedication to spraying blood around here that would shame an abattoir, with decapitations, severings, crawling eyeballs and something interesting involving a pig’s head all featuring. There’s absolutely no half-arsing in They Will Kill You’s relentless barrage on the senses.   

Seemingly working from a brief of ‘The Raid meets Get Out, only more Looney Tunes’, Russian director Kirill Sokolov and his co-writer Alex Litvak manage to cram together a load of disparate elements – social horror, Satanic panic and nutso exploitation flick – into a muscular and surprisingly coherent whole. 

Zazie Beetz’s ex-con Asia Reaves is on the hunt for the younger sister (Myha'la) she lost when she fled their abusive dad. In prison, she’s learnt how to fight like a superhero – just go with it – and emerges determined to make good with her bitter and estranged sibling.

The trail has led to a Manhattan tower block adorned, worryingly, with Satanic hieroglyphs where she’s landed a job as a maid. This is cover for her snooping, an intro in a world of white privilege that’s run by unsmiling Irish superintendent Lilith Woodhouse (Patricia Arquette doing several Irish accents at once). Heather Graham and Tom Felton are among the permanent guests at this creepy Hotel California where phones are confiscated and the doors triple locked. Of the Black staff, only Lilith’s husband (Wonka’s Paterson Joseph) seems to have any agency. 

A non-stop blizzard of bloodshed and gore

But this is all just coy prelude. When Asia beds down for her first night, They Will Kill You properly reveals itself, like a rollercoaster that’s cranked its way to its apex. From here on, it’s a non-stop blizzard of bloodshed and gore.

In his English-language debut, Sokolov demonstrates a real knack for action choreography. Deadpool 2’s impressive Beetz is a lithe and relentless focal point in blistering set pieces through bedrooms, ballrooms, corridors and crawlspaces. The narrative geography will be familiar to fans of Gareth Evans’s The Raid – Asia has to get to the top floor to save her sis – but it’s a compliment to say that some of the fight scenes will too. An early twist means that the bloodletting develops a repetitive feel, and there are unfortunate parallels with the recent Ready or Not 2, but the wincing and guilty laughs never quite dry up. Cult status may await.

In cinemas worldwide Fri Mar 27.