You have to love a movie that just tells you what it’s really about on the title screen: unmitigated and stylised gory horror action from start to finish. Director Kirill Sokolov’s first major international English-language directed film isn’t the deepest, but it doesn’t let up and has some unique shots going for it.

An ex-convict named Asia (Zazie Beetz) joins a co-op residence called the Virgil to work as a housekeeper, which has a slew of its own kooky inhabitants from Irish superintendent Lilith (Patricia Arquette) to residents Sharon (Heather Graham) and Kevin (Tom Felton) who turns out is part of a satanic cult that sacrifices newcomers to their dark lord. See, Asia is on a lookout for her missing sister Maria Reeves (Myha’la) and her last known sighting is in the Virgil. So off Asia goes, getting locked into the residence which is escape-proof, and has to butcher her way out of a kidnapper’s situation. Only the perpetrators are immortal and Asia needs to find a solution to that while getting her sister back.

From the moment Asia gets assaulted in her room, the film is pretty much a non-stop action barrage with bits of context laid out here and there. Sokolov and crew’s camera work and action shots are serviceable and flashy enough to keep your attention, but it isn’t anything you haven’t seen before. Just a lot of decapitation, gross body stumps, chopped limbs, an orgy room (censored in Malaysia because of course), and a lot of puppetry work involving an eyeball and an animal’s head which are the highlights of the film. Asia and Maria’s backstories are fleshed out enough, but not to the point where it’s barely there nor does it outstay its welcome, which is nice. Everyone on-set is a potty-mouth thanks to the not-so-subtle script, so that can get tiring after a while.

They Will Kill You just aims to be a 2026-era grindhouse-style all-killer-no-filler movie with its short runtime and even shorter reaches to its plot destinations. The film feels like an imitation of classic action films and is clearly a directed work paying tribute to the Leones and Tarantinos without carving out its own identity. It also has a seemingly over-the-top tone that could have gone a bit more overboard than its devilish setup. Still, what we got here is serviceable enough and is a good enough stepping stone for its director Sokolov to aim higher and think bigger.