605: They Will Kill You

[00:00:00] Hello everybody, welcome back to the Film Buds podcast. This is episode number 605 and my name is Henry. This time I'm going to be tackling the new film They Will Kill You, which is now available for digital purchase and rent. And it is directed by Kirill Sokolov, stars Zazie Beetz, Patricia Arquette,

[00:00:25] Patterson Joseph, Malfoy is in there, Heather Graham. And the synopsis is, a woman takes a job as a housekeeper in a NYC high-rise, unaware of the building's history of disappearances. She soon realizes the community is shrouded in mystery. First thing, as always, I love Zazie Beetz. I think she's great in this and she was honestly the main reason I wanted to watch this and what

[00:00:51] kept me the most interested. But besides that, I was at least curious. I don't think I was really excited about this. And maybe I'll get hate for this. Let me know if you agree, disagree, if you have a way to comment. But I'm getting pretty tired of the eat the rich comedy films that we've had over the last decade. I think it kind of started or rebooted with You're Next, then we've had Ready or Not, The Hunt, the other recent film How to Make a Killing with Glenn Powell,

[00:01:20] which I think is the best of all those. While yes, it is still a major problem in the world of the disparity between rich and poor and social classes, there's only so much you can say with that. It is just the elite think they're untouchable and then these people who are oppressed make them think otherwise. And as always, there will be spoilers, so just fair warning. What this felt like the most to

[00:01:44] me was if Quentin Tarantino had directed a Ready or Not movie, for better and for worse, because it felt very, very derivative of Kill Bill. It's this traumatized woman and she's on this mission of revenge. The modern electric kind of Western score, the slow-mo, the stylized title character cards and how they do flashbacks and then jump forward again. There was just a little too much of that and done so

[00:02:14] obviously that it was hard to ignore and think of it as anything that original. But regardless, I do think the concept is interesting. You know, this woman is in prison for trying to protect her younger sister and then she gets out and she is determined to find her. She gets a job at this hotel that is this upper-class, very private, elite place and then crazy stuff starts happening. It turns out that

[00:02:38] the members are part of this cult where they are immortal and they can regenerate, resurrect themselves like Malfoy gets his head cut off and then he's able to put it back on or someone's head gets blown up and it slowly comes back. And I think that's fun. You know, there's fun to be had. There's some cool, ridiculous gore. It's got a good genre-blending feel. The editing, the performances, all were solid.

[00:03:04] I wasn't that crazy about the special effects. I think when it was done practically, it was goofy, but it worked. But then the CGI was a little overused and I didn't think it looked that great. Kind of took me out of it. The best sequence in the movie was probably the flaming axe fight. The detached eye rolling around the hotel, keeping a literal eye on Zazie Beetz. That was pretty funny. Everything towards the end with the pig head, that was all right. Sort of weird and different and

[00:03:33] creative. And the twists of what her sister does to help Zazie Beetz and vice versa. When they were crawling on their hands and knees in that, not really a basement, but I guess it's some kind of underground floor. And of course their mobility is very limited, but they're still trying to fight and catch each other. It was only about 90 minutes, which was nice. There are some points that kind of lag. I actually thought the first 15, 20 minutes were very effective. Like I was more intrigued by

[00:04:02] all that than what came after, ironically. Like that slow buildup as to what's happening, who are these people? But then once it gets into the fighting, it's all fighting. I do think that the prison flashbacks, that was a clever way of letting us know, okay, she knows how to fight because she was constantly fighting for her life while she was in prison. The location I liked, I don't know if it was a real place or how much of it was set, but the hallways, the rooms, the costume design as well,

[00:04:31] all that was quite good. Three out of five.