‘They Will Kill You’ Review: The Co-Op From Hell

A case in which a production designer and prosthetics team showed up for work but the screenwriters might as well have crowdsourced their ideas from fanboys, the splatter-fest “They Will Kill You” largely takes place at an exclusive Manhattan co-op statedto be occupied by some of the borough’s most odious elite. One longtime resident describes the site as a deathtrap for anyone who tries to escape. The plot is a potential spoiler deathtrap for any critic who would dare to reveal the specific nature of the edifice’s horrors, such as who “they” are or why they might kill “you,” even if the trailer tells all.

After a rain-soaked prologue set a decade before the main action, the protagonist, played by Zazie Beetz, arrives at the building, the Virgil, ostensibly to take a job as a maid. The filmmakers have made little effort to harmonize the Virgil, a century-old structure situated in a gentrifying neighborhood, with the city skyline. Perhaps the architectural incongruity is intentional; perhaps it’s a tipoff that the film was shot in South Africa.

Beetz’s character turns out to be named Asia, but she initially gives a false identity to the superintendent, Lily (an Irish-accented Patricia Arquette). Asia’s incursion into the Virgil has something to do with rescuing her now-adult sister, Maria (Myha’la), introduced in the prologue as a young girl.

The Virgil, with its artfully yellowed bedroom décor and vintage hallway moldings, suggests what might happen if graduates of the “Barton Fink” and “Shining” schools of interior decoration teamed up on a boutique hotel. The director, Kirill Sokolov, who stockscredit on the screenplay with Alex Litvak, approaches the setting with the logic of a footagegame. Each area of the building becomes a kind of level — a secret crawlspace, an elevator shaft with danger lurking at opening doors — that Asia must conquer before advancing to the foreshadowed terrors of the ninth floor.

The nature and goals of the inhabitants (others are played by Heather Graham, Paterson Joseph and Tom Felton) have already garnered advance comparisons to the “Ready or Not” franchise. Asia’s payback quest, the cartoonish arterial spray and the time-hopping structure give the movie more than a slight resemblance to Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill.” Still, anyone who has chided Tarantino for secondhand conceits might consider what his films have that this one does not: patience, a zest for dialogue and soundtrack selections that enhance the set pieces rather turning them into jokes.

A brutal upbringing seems to have left Asia with a shockingly high tolerance for pain; when a blade pins her hand to a wall, she detaches it by pulling straight through the flesh. “They Will Kill You” serves up a generous buffet for gorehounds, who can feast on the sight of a hopping eyeball (with optic nerve still attached) and a man getting split in two by a flaming ax. All credit to the folks who run the Virgil: Real thought has gone into these amenities.

They Will Kill You
Rated R. Inconsiderate neighbors. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. In theaters.