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Articolo aggiornato il 12/07/2026

They Will Kill You is a genuinely unsettling ride that doesn’t waste time with exposition, throwing you straight into a New York City fever dream where nothing is safe and everyone has an agenda. Kirill Sokolov’s debut feature scrambles action, comedy, and horror in ways that shouldn’t work but mostly do, though the tonal whiplash will destroy you if you’re not ready for it.

They Will Kill You: The plot (no spoilers)

They Will Kill You opens with Zazie Beetz applying for a housekeeper gig at some swanky Manhattan tower, and immediately you know something’s rotting in this building’s walls. People vanish regularly, the residents are disturbingly wealthy and weirdly connected, and there’s this persistent undercurrent suggesting demonic activity is the least of anyone’s problems. The setup sounds like a conventional folk-horror paranoia piece, but Sokolov refuses to play it straight for more than five minutes at a time.

The film operates in this grimy, maximalist headspace where jump scares coexist with deadpan one-liners, and genuine dread gets interrupted by absurdist moments that’ll make you laugh despite yourself. You’re never quite sure if what you’re watching is a possession story, a satirical thriller about class warfare, or a dark character study about survival in a system designed to chew people up. That ambiguity is either the movie’s greatest strength or its biggest liability depending on your patience for controlled chaos.

Acting & direction

Zazie Beetz carries this thing with the kind of coiled intensity that suggests her character is always three moves ahead, even when she’s clearly in way over her head. Myha’la steals every scene she’s in with a performance that’s part seduction, part threat, never settling on either long enough for comfort. Tom Felton and Heather Graham lean into their roles’ seediness with obvious relish, though neither gets quite enough screen time to fully justify their casting weight.

Sokolov’s direction is deliberately disorienting—he stacks the frame with too much visual information, uses color and shadow to suggest paranoia rather than explain it, and paces the film like a panic attack that won’t let you breathe between sequences. The score alternates between synth dread and percussive chaos, which matches the fractured narrative perfectly. Cinematography-wise, the high-rise becomes a character itself, all concrete brutalism and chrome emptiness that makes skin crawl just by existing on screen.

The strengths

• Zazie Beetz is absolutely magnetic as a protagonist you believe would survive a Satanic cult through sheer stubborn refusal to play victim.
• The film’s refusal to settle into any single genre creates genuine unpredictability—you never know if the next scene will make you scream or laugh at its own absurdity.
• At ninety-four minutes, Sokolov understands that restraint is horror’s secret weapon, and he doesn’t overstay his welcome despite packing in enough plot for two films.
• The production design is meticulous, transforming the high-rise into a character that embodies corporate soullessness and occult dread in equal measure.

The weaknesses

• The tonal shifts are so violent that some viewers will experience whiplash rather than engagement, especially if you came for straightforward horror rather than experimental genre-blending.
• The third act relies on plot developments that feel slightly convenient, as if Sokolov suddenly needed to wrap things up before the chaos spiraled beyond containment entirely.

Who should watch it

If you worship at the altar of dark comedy mixed with psychological horror—think early A24 sensibilities crossed with elevated genre fare—then this is absolutely your lane. Fans of Ari Aster’s controlled pandemonium, or anyone who appreciated the weird energy of Suspiria remakes, will find something to gnaw on here. This is for viewers who believe horror and humor aren’t mutually exclusive but rather two sides of the same coin about human fear and survival instinct.

Final verdict

They Will Kill You is a genuinely weird, occasionally frustrating, and ultimately fascinating debut that proves Sokolov has something to say about paranoia, class, and what it means to be disposable in a system that devours people. It’s not flawless—the tonal balance sometimes tips into self-indulgence, and certain plot threads feel slightly underbaked—but the film’s commitment to being strange rather than safe earned my respect. At seven out of ten, it’s a film you should experience without expectations, because trying to predict what Sokolov will do next is a losing game. Watch it with people who won’t judge you for simultaneously feeling terrified and laughing at the audacity of it all.