Asia Reaves (Zazie Beetz), an ex-con with secrets, takes a job at a private members’ club, the Virgil, run by Lily (Patricia Arquette). It’s a live-in position with friendly co-workers; the only problem is that she’s been hired as their latest human sacrifice. Cue a brutal fight for survival.
It doesn’t take long, watching Zazie Beetz administer one beat-down after another against a parade of cloaked goons, before you start wondering if this film was misnamed and should be ‘She Will Kill Them’. With extreme prejudice. But that’s half the fun of this gonzo action adventure, that it sets a crowd of despicable Satanists against a woman who is so full of pain, fury and desperation that she’s the next best thing to unstoppable. Cue mayhem.
The basic premise is all too suited to the times. Beetz’s Asia Reaves adopts a false persona to land a job as a maid at a Manhattan private members’ club, looking for her missing sister Maria (Myha’la). It’s a dark and stormy night and Asia is soaking wet, shivering with cold and desperate to get inside. There’s just one problem: as one should perhaps expect from a building called the Virgil, its residents have a direct line to hell, and they’re planning on sacrificing the newcomer in ritualistic fashion.
Kirill Sokolov’s commitment to carnage and grisly violence is absolute
The fact that Asia is carrying a suitcase full of weaponry suggests that she has some idea what she is getting into, but she reveals impressive fight skills nevertheless. The residents, meanwhile, dress like TV’s Traitors and seem uniformly weaselly; the only possibly sympathetic one is Patricia Arquette’s Lily, the formidable but not inhuman mistress of the staff, softened just a touch by affection for her husband (Paterson Joseph) and a shaky Irish accent. Director Kirill Sokolov shoots the whole thing like he’s Wes Anderson remaking The Raid: all saturated colours and eerily composed tableaux, even when he’s shooting a disembodied eyeball on its own adventure.
It’s unquestionably style over substance – this is a film completely lacking in subtlety or much subtext (beyond the commendable urge to eat the rich). One chase scene, through the crawl spaces that naturally pepper this deeply creepy building, is inches away from belonging in Fantastic Mr. Fox. Still, Sokolov’s commitment to carnage and grisly violence is absolute, and it makes this a wildly entertaining ride.
Blood-drenched and gore-splattered, anchored by a hard-as-nails performance by Beetz, this is a thinly plotted but immensely fun horrorfest. Best watched with a strong stomach.
