By Alison Roh Park
**SPOILER ALERT: This movie review reveals important plot details.
They Will Kill You is a new film by Kirill Sokolov and Alex Litvak, produced by Italian Argentine siblings Barbara Muschietti and Andy Muschietti. The film made its world premiere at South by Southwest 2026 and I packed into a full house Paramount Theater for its last screening.
Described as a genre-bending horror comedy, German actor Zazie Beetz of Atlanta and Black Mirror fame plays Asia Reaves, a hardened protagonist searching for her little sister Maria, played by the actor Myha’la, after decades of separation. The cast includes actors like Gen X icon Heather Graham, trans writer/director/actor Gabe Gabriel and Patricia Arquette (a favorite actor of mine since the first movie I saw on my own as a teenager—Stigmata).
The story begins in media res as the two motherless sisters attempt to escape their abusive father—unsuccessfully. Asia ends up incarcerated, and we rejoin her years later after her release from prison on the steps of a luxury skyscraper in New York City on the night of a torrential storm. She is seeking work as a servant under a different name (although we won’t know why for a bit) in what seems like a hotel for billionaire cultists. Everyone is a little too happy, voices are a little too singsong, and savvy viewers know that something is amiss.
Our offering is on the loose—be on the lookout. I just dropped her picture in the group chat.”
-Patricia Arquette as Lily Woodhouse
Shortly after being locked away in her new quarters, the murder attempts begin. Wild John Woo-meets-Mortal Kombat fight sequences ensue and the genre mashup begins. We learn that Asia Reaves is not there to be a servant as part of her reentry into society—she is there for her sister, who she believes is being held against her will. What she doesn’t know is that she was lured there to be a human sacrifice—unfortunately, not by regular mortals, nor by regular billionaire mortals, but by an ensemble of semi-immortal billionaire satanists whose lifestyles depend on human sacrifice.
Asia is quickly covered in blood from head to toe. Audiences witness an almost comical degree of gore, but cheer for almost every scene, particularly when she rises again, feathers and blood in her hair. There was definitely a Kill Bill-esque orientalism present; later, I learned that Beetz’ inspiration for the character was the female protagonist Lady Snowblood, a 1970s Japanese manga and film femme fatale with only one mission in life—revenge. In an interview with Den of Geek, Beetz said, “I had her photo up in the makeup trailer [throughout the production]. I would visualize her and be like, let me embody this character.”
The Muschietti siblings describe taking a chance on Kiril Sokolov for his first U.S. film as paying it forward. Barbara and Andy were discovered by Guillermo del Toro for what he described as the scariest scene he had ever seen in the siblings’ breakthrough 2013 short film Mama, which led to their acclaimed adaptations of Stephen King’s It with the author’s blessing. With their track record, it’s not surprising that they have a gift for productions that explore how the horrors of childhood, unaddressed, become the nightmares of adulthood.
Though rife with classic horror tropes like darkening hallways, mirror work, anthropomorphized animal carcasses and a terrifying original score by Carlos Rafael Rivera, the deepest elements of horror were human in nature. The film played with notions of autonomy and consent under coercive conditions. When blood-soaked Asia finally reunites with her sister and proclaims, “I came here to save you”, Maria rejects her. It is too little, too late—her baby sister has already been hardened by the cruelty of the world and chosen wealth and power over integrity and loyalty.
The Reaves sisters were first trapped and threatened as children by their own father—intergenerational trauma is implied as they have no mother who might have equipped her daughters with the necessary rites of passage had she herself survived. Even when we think there is respite and the sisters are redeemed, when they hug for the first time since being separated at a much younger age, it can only be for the briefest moment. There is still work to be done. In many ways, I saw the movie as allegory for the interlocking systems many women and children confront, an obstacle course of persistent monsters that won’t die.
Cab Driver: “What happened?”
Asia Reaves: “Rich people.”
The film is reminiscent of Black horror, a relatively recently coined term, but definitely not new as a genre that goes back to at least George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead to the more recent Sorry to Bother You by Boots Riley and Jordan Peele’s 2017 movie Get Out, followed by They, Us, to Ryan Coogler’s 2025 film Sinners. In They Will Kill You, women of color and violence might be still exist in the same frame, but not simply to victimize them. These films don’t just subvert traditional horror tropes by simple reversals of who dies first, but by creating a world that captures the often absurd reality of life at the intersections of race, gender and class, and a world where the underdog has a winning shot.
Asia’s superhuman drive was the only way she could survive assault after assault. The villains resurrected after every failed attempt to kill them, even appropriating and using the very weapons and tactics initially used against them. When Asia gets to the boss level, she is ultimately faced with her own machete in the hands of the housekeeper spliced with the demon pig. Asia and her sister had to confront their own choices, and experience total death—ego and actual. To win the war, they had to burn the whole house down.
While its meta-narratives may not have been intentionally subversive, I found this film a refreshing reframe of revenge horror. Even if you don’t see the parallels, most viewers will appreciate the story’s more “universal” themes. Patricia Arquette shared with Den of Geek why she took the role: “I loved the story. I loved that Zazie was gonna be this superhuman driven by love…that kind of human warrior that’s pushing from goodness against evil.”