They Will Kill You ★★★

Released: 27 March 2026

Director: Kirill Sokolov

Starring: Zazie Beetz, Tom Felton, Heather Graham

Few Russian filmmakers have successfully conquered the mighty Hollywood studio system: some may remember Andrei Konchalovsky’s work in the 80s and 90s, others will instantly jump to more recent genre ventures from Timur Bekmambetov and Ilya Naishuller. Yet unlike other international directors who often retain their local sensibilities and apply them to English-language output (see: Takashi Shimizu, Bong Joon-ho, Ang Lee), that phenomenon doesn’t seem to translate with post-Soviet imagemakers. The reason for this lacking national flavour is fairly obvious: the Pepsi generation of Russian filmmakers began their journey alongside a burgeoning industry that was developing as an echo of its American counterpart, desperately trying to shake off its Soviet roots. The “wild nineties” left the nation searching for answers, looking at the Western capitalist ideals and its filmmaking representatives.

Why the preamble and what does it have to do with They Will Kill You? Well, director Kirill Sokolov is the latest Russian expat who has been given keys to the Warner Bros. kingdom, entering the scene in a slightly different fashion compared to his predecessors. Sokolov, who made a name for himself with a delightfully abrasive first feature Why Don’t You Just Die! (fittingly titled Dad, Die! in Russia), comes from an era of experimentation and discovery that formed the collective mindset of Russian millennials. He is a curious case of a filmmaker raised on 2000s Russian trends, which can explain why his English-language debut is so indebted to that cultural moment and its wide range of international influences. His latest is a playful genre pastiche, positively naive and blissfully committed to its modest aspirations — if not for its slight “eat the rich” angle, you’d hardly pin it as a 2026 effort.

Much like his 2018 debut, They Will Kill You is a rather contained action-horror piece: set almost entirely within the walls of a classy NYC hotel, the film follows a newly hired maid, Asia Reeves (Zazie Beetz), who finds herself trapped in the building with deadly cultists dead set on using her as an offering to their deity. To say more would be to reveal the twist that somehow remained hidden from all the marketing material, so let’s just say things get extremely gnarly very quickly — and maybe more than a bit supernatural.

Sokolov stays true to himself here: if his early work was a sardonic critique of the Russian panelka (Soviet-era prefabricated housing blocks), widespread corruption and cult-like patriarchy, They Will Kill You is a simpler variation of the same dynamics adapted for the post-Satanic panic American reality. However, not everything that applies to Putin’s Russia and its terrible father figures could translate to Hollywood, which is clear in the film’s treatment of its domestic violence angle. In the midst of all the excellent stunt choreography and gruesome practical effects, characters make detours into discussions of child abuse, racial violence and systemic inequality — something the writing here is simply not equipped to handle. Years from now, the phenomenon of class-conscious pop cinema will make for a fascinating case study of contemporary zeitgeist and how film struggled to reflect the volatile socioeconomic landscape of the late 2010s/early 2020s, though currently it feels less like a statement and more oversimplified characterisation.

Detours aside, They Will Kill You functions exceptionally well as a renegade action-heavy facemelter. Stylistic flourishes abound; this 90-minute splatterfest is a carnival of poor taste and gleeful violence that’s more concerned with buckets of blood than narratological coherence, feeling closer in spirit to vintage grindhouse cinema. The 36-year-old physicist-turned-filmmaker has never shied away from his array of influences: Park Chan-wook, Quentin Tarantino, Sergio Leone, all spiced up with a bit of Sam Raimi for good measure. At times, this hodgepodge of homages risks being treated as emulation, but Sokolov is skilled and witty enough to pull off his own unique twist on all the limb-cutting action. Never underestimate the impact of Kill Bill on Russian youth, that’s for sure.

It’d be way too easy to compare the film to its contemporaries, especially when conceptually similar mid-budget genre fare released in cinemas just last week — but that’s not the audience They Will Kill You hopes to capture. Sokolov’s film is much nastier and, ironically, more sincere than any of the recent studio splatter efforts. The combination of effortlessly likable leads, clever visual trickery, and surprisingly gnarly twists puts the film leagues above similar genre output of its ilk. It’s messy and mostly nonsensical, yet there’s real passion behind those images, a love for all things foul and grimy that’s rare to see in standard multiplexes these days. Trust a Russian man to bring it back to the mainstream.