by Nick Ferro, Editor
Last week I was taken aback by the realization that Ready or Not: Here I Come was moved up from its April week two release to March week three. Which in and of itself isn’t an unusual thing; movies move their dates all the time. However, after seeing They Will Kill You, I completely understand why. Disney most likely learned that New Line was putting out a movie that was, from a plot perspective, NEARLY IDENTICAL and freaked out. In recent months I have been doing my best to avoid trailers past the initial teaser, so I went into They Will Kill You believing it to be a John Wick clone and I was only a third correct.
A woman with a particular set of skills is stuck in a place where everyone wants to kill her but she is a badass who can handle herself. So, color me surprised when I learn that she is there to find her estranged sister and the place is a Satan worshiping cult of rich loonies hellbent on making her their ritualistic sacrifice. Oh, and the sister is mad at our main character because she left her alone for years. But fear not! For I will explain to you exactly why Ready or Not 2 (as the posters and commercials will have you believe is the title, despite a ‘2’ not being listed anywhere in the movie proper) is actually the lesser of these nearly identical movies.
They Will Kill You stars Zazie Beetz as a mysterious woman who introduces herself as Isabelle. She shows up to the first day of her new job as a maid in a fancy New York hotel after being in prison for ten years. Her new boss Lily (Patricia Arquette) shows her around and it is clear right off the bat something is weird about this place. That night while sleeping her room is broken into by a group of black cloak wearing, animal-masked individuals. She wakes up and proceeds to kill every single one of them with the weapons she smuggled in her suitcase. In this moment the movie shows off exactly why it is superior to Ready or Not 2, the action in this scene is frenetic, hyper stylized, and filled more blood than you will know what to do with. When someone gets hit with a shot gun they fly across the room. When she swings her sword she takes off limbs with ease. We then learn her name is actually Asia, here to locate her sister Maria (Myha’la), as well as a specific secret the hotel is hiding about its residents. These two scenes declare loudly to the audience: Get on board or you won’t have fun. Because at the end of the day this movie wants you to have fun.
At first I was trying to compare They Will Kill You to other movies. It’s part John Wick, part Kill Bill vol 1, part Old Boy, but none of those comparisons really hit the nail on the head. Ultimately, I landed on this movie being the closest thing we have to a live action anime that I have seen in a long time. The framing of the camera, the supernatural elements, the fights through the hotel, and especially the final “boss battle” are all very much things you would see in anime these days. It would not surprise me if the writers were huge anime fans. And Beetz is the perfect anime protagonist. She is tortured and on a mission she is determined to complete. She says very little but narrates her backstory when needed. She can take a beating and keep on coming whether that’s getting stabbed in the back with a screwdriver or having a sword go through her hand. Nothing is going to stop her from saving her sister.
However, this leads to one of my only quibbles; the one element of the story that fails, in my opinion, is the structure. There is a new trope in Hollywood that many movies are adopting, and this movie employs it in maybe the worst way: “The Chapter Breaks.” Weapons and Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die being the most recent examples, but many others have been telling stories in this manner in the last few years and it is starting to feel like studios think that the best way to tell a genre story is to employ this technique. When done well, obviously, I don’t mind it, but here it is not. There are a few moments where I can understand the need for a flashback but to give it a title card as if to say, “what you are about to see is very important to story and it needs the pomp and circumstance of its own title card,” only to retell something we already saw or provide some unnecessary narration was disappointing. These breaks did little more than grind the movie to a halt and offer up very little in terms of needed detail. In fact, if I had to guess, the opening of the movie felt incredibly tacked on to the point where without it these act breaks might have been very necessary but with the existence of the “ten years earlier” opening I had everything I needed to understand what was happening.
Despite the structure that sometimes slows down the pacing, I had a really fun time with the visuals. Sometimes feeling like you are looking at panels of a comic, sometimes feeling like you are in a horror video game. I can’t be sure, but I think they may have even messed with the frame rate to give the fights a faster momentum. At one point while Beetz is crawling through tunnels and being chased by a cloaked figure the visuals were frantic, and the frame rate felt off which made their movements seem choppier and more unnatural as though she was being chased by something much more horrific. It was actually really affecting to amp up the tension. Whatever they were doing really worked for me because I was always locked in when the movie took the cinematically creative route.
There is a nice balance of action and story and the relationship between the sisters, while almost identical to Ready or Not 2, was a complete improvement. I was telling a friend that the “Ready or Not sisters’” feud was incredibly superficial and petty. One left the other in the care of a good foster family and as a result she was resented. In this movie, Asia left Maria in an abusive parental relationship because she went to jail. One could argue that resentment on Maria’s part is petty, but the movie goes out of its way to show how Maria viewed the events as abandonment and her resentment was justified because even jail seemed like an escape from the hell they were living. Despite their conflict being more understandable, they still managed to reconcile in a believable timeframe unlike Ready or Not 2. Asia shows the lengths she was willing to go to protect Maria and there was no logical reason for them to remain at odds. There wasn’t any grandstanding or pettiness that drew out the tension for the duration of the film. It was more believable and I appreciated that.
Overall, They Will Kill You was not a perfect movie (far from it). It wasn’t very original in its premise, but it was very funny at times and entertaining to watch. Clocking in at a cool 94 minutes, it doesn’t overstay its welcome and you will never be bored. If you are in the mood for a fun action-packed adventure with blood, gore, and murder you will have a blast. And if you have a choice between They Will Kill You and Ready or Not: Here I Come, I think the choice is pretty obvious!
Rating: Liked It
They Will Kill You is currently playing in theaters.
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