They Will Kill You had the utter misfortune of being released at the same time as the Ready or Not sequel. The studio did it an even bigger disservice by creating a trailer that made this film look like a clone of the other one. But despite some similarities – a young woman being trapped in a large building and hunted by the rich – They Will Kill You has a lot of surprises up its sleeve.

Asia Reaves (Zazie Beetz) gets a job as a maid in a swanky hotel run by the mysterious Lily Woodhouse (Patricia Arquette), but she soon discovers that everyone in the hotel is part of a cult that plans to make her the evening’s sacrifice. 

I’m afraid to say much more about the plot would spoil the fun. This is a film that gets a lot of mileage out of its many twists and turns. I especially appreciated how it did differentiate itself from Ready or Not, and those differences were worth being surprised about. 

I will say this is an incredibly enjoyable and thoroughly weird film. This is a film where everyone involved just decided to go for it, and it mostly works.

Sometimes it doesn’t. It brings up several threads and then never follows through with them. For instance, there is a moment where it is implied that each floor of the hotel corresponds with one level of Dante’s Inferno, but the only one we get a hint at is the “Fuck Floor.” A few times the film will hint at fun things it could have explored, and then it just doesn’t. 

The action is quite good, and the camera movements are very florid, but it does that thing where it often relies on computer effects instead of practical ones. This is true even in scenes where they could have just built a real set and made things look much more real. But modern movies tend to do that a lot.

But Zazie Beetz is a freaking star. She’s so much fun in this. Patricia Arquette is absolutely chewing the scenery, and the rest of the cast (including Tom Felton and Heather Graham) seem to be having a blast as well.

I had a ton of fun watching this, and I highly recommend it.