If Quentin Tarantino had made Kill Bill in 2026 rather than 2003/2004, it might have looked something like They Will Kill You. That’s not to overly compliment the talents of Kirill Sokolov and his entertaining genre film; Kill Bill is rightly considered something of a classic, while They Will Kill You is merely a fun diversion. But the vibes are similar, and in this case that is, in fact, a compliment, as opposed to most of the times you’re talking about a Tarantino-esque film, dismissing it and dropping words like “rip-off.” Sokolov has clearly made an homage to Kill Bill, particularly around its music and its iconic posing of star Zazie Beetz, and for the most part it’s a successful one.

Beetz plays Asia Reaves – the name itself feels like a QT special – who is the older by at least a decade of two sisters, both of whom are being abused by their cretin of a father. On a rainy night she pulls a gun on him while trying to protect her sister Maria, and when the bullet strikes (but does not kill) him, she impulsively flees to avoid being caught – while leaving Maria still in his clutches.

A decade later, after serving jail time for what one might assume was a justifiable case of self-defence, Asia has a chance to redeem the abandonment of her sister by saving her from a different set of clutches. Now played by Mhya’la, Maria has gone to work as a maid in a mysterious high-rise in New York City called The Virgil – and hasn’t been heard from since. Eager to suss it out, Maria assumes the identity of another job applicant and is greeted by a coterie of rich, eccentric guests and the establishment’s proprietor, an Irish matriarch played by Patricia Arquette. It seems clear that The Virgil is an institution of strange rules and rituals, but Asia has no idea just how strange.

The quest to find Maria will involve all sorts of run-ins with both the staff and occupants of this building. Asia has learned enough in prison to fatally subdue her attackers – after all, she’s brought with her a samurai’s blade and is good with makeshift weapons – but they have a bad habit of resurrecting once she’s “killed” them. These include the former Draco Malfoy, Tom Felton, and the former Rollergirl, Heather Graham, having more fun on screen than she’s had in years.

It may not be fair to attribute to Tarantino any film whose style involves violent duels, a badass woman, sprays of arterial blood from severed limbs, chapter headings, and a score resuscitated from some obscure 50-year-old western, but if the shoe fits, Kirill Sokolov needs to wear it. And he wears it pretty well.

The creative choices here, which are obviously not without their debts, are invigorating and exciting enough to give us some of the same pleasures as when we encountered Kill Bill for the first time. Then there are some wild variations that go well beyond even the manner that Tarantino is tethered to realism. The ways in which these foes are rendered temporarily inoperative, before regathering themselves like a fleshier version of the T-1000, are always entertaining and sometimes quite funny.

One of the film’s best weapons, and one of her own best, is Zazie Beetz’s charisma and dynamic screen presence. You need a woman in this role who can be raw and pissed off, and Beetz has those attributes in spades. It’s a physical performance in which her character is continually soaked and resoaked in blood, the comfy clothes she wore to bed continually darkening as the character progresses through several phases of one crazy night. She doesn’t necessarily ground us in any emotional realities for Asia, even though the film makes gestures toward the abuse subplot, but Sokolov has no illusions about what this film is and what role it will serve for us. It’s basically a snazzy exploitation film, and its pleasures are visceral rather than intellectual.

Not as strong is Arquette, whose Irish accent goes in and out so much that you have to frequently reacquaint yourself with the notion that she was doing one in the first place. She also might be a bit miscast. Graham and Felton do have some sneering fun. This may be more about practical/digital effects than Graham’s own performance, but there’s a sequence where her character’s resuscitation is, shall we say, incomplete, leaving her to scrabble around with a stump of a head, and one eyeball traveling around like an advanced scout, trailing its optical nerve and moving like a concertina through the building’s air ducts.

After making so many references to Quentin Tarantino, perhaps it’s necessary to reassert, or assert for the first time, that They Will Kill You generally carries a feeling of originality. Successful films take something you already know and like and tweak it in ways that are newly watchable, and They Will Kill You is watchable from start to finish.

 

They Will Kill You is currently playing in Australian cinemas.