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Articolo aggiornato il 20/09/2026

They Will Kill You is an aggressively strange amalgam of dark comedy, horror, and thriller that swings wildly at its targets but only connects half the time. It’s got style and nerve, but the tonal whiplash will leave some viewers exhilarated and others utterly exasperated.

They Will Kill You: The plot (no spoilers)

They Will Kill You kicks off with Zazie Beetz‘s character answering a help-wanted ad for a housekeeper gig in some swanky Manhattan high-rise, and—surprise—the place is basically run by people who’ve been disappearing residents with alarming regularity, possibly while worshipping things that don’t appear on mainstream religious pamphlets. It’s a premise ripe for satire, and Sokolov clearly knows it, approaching the material like a provocateur with a megaphone and zero interest in subtlety.

The film exists in this queasy space between cult thriller and absurdist comedy, where you’re never quite sure if you should be laughing or checking the exits. The setting—that high-rise, all glass and minimalist menace—becomes almost a character itself, a claustrophobic playground where the rules of genre convention get regularly trampled and nobody seems to be playing by the same playbook.

Acting & direction

Zazie Beetz carries the film with genuine charisma, playing her character with a mix of naïveté and steel that keeps you watching even when the script doesn’t quite earn her commitment. Patricia Arquette is deliciously unhinged in whatever role she occupies, chewing scenery like it owes her money, and Tom Felton gets to do something other than brooding, which is refreshing if not entirely successful.

Sokolov’s direction has visual flair—he understands how to compose a frame and build dread through architecture and shadow—but the pacing is genuinely wonky, oscillating between scenes that crawl and sequences that feel punch-drunk and overstimulated. The score lurches between ominous strings and comedic stabs that don’t always land, and you can feel the director fighting his own instincts about what this movie actually wants to be.

The strengths

• The film refuses to apologize for its weirdness, swinging between genres with the confidence of someone who genuinely doesn’t care if you’re along for the ride.
• Zazie Beetz is magnetic enough to anchor an otherwise schizophrenic narrative, and her chemistry with the supporting cast creates moments of genuine tension beneath the camp.
• The production design is legitimately unsettling; that high-rise feels like a character designed specifically to make you uncomfortable, all cold angles and suspicious doorways.

The weaknesses

• The tonal shifts are so abrupt and so frequent that they undermine both the horror and the comedy, leaving you perpetually off-balance in a way that feels chaotic rather than intentional.
• The cult mythology never coalesces into anything meaningful; it’s all surface-level weirdness without the psychological or satirical meat that would make the premise sing.

Who should watch it

This is for people who loved Suspiria‘s visual excess but wished it was funnier, or who appreciate dark comedy-thrillers that aren’t afraid to alienate half their audience in pursuit of something different. You need to be the kind of viewer who finds messy ambition more interesting than polished mediocrity, and who can forgive a film’s failures if it swings for the fences hard enough.

Final verdict

The film is a qualified recommend for adventurous viewers willing to tolerate genuine narrative dysfunction in exchange for something that doesn’t play it safe. It’s not successful as horror, not entirely successful as comedy, and occasionally falls apart as a thriller, but there’s something admirably uncompromising about its refusal to settle into comfortable genre territory. Watch it if you’ve exhausted the usual suspects and crave something genuinely strange, but go in with temperate expectations—this is ambitious failure rather than triumph, and that’s worth something if you’re in the right headspace for it.