We closed out Women in History Month in the most appropriate way possible: fresh out of the theater, still a little wired, and genuinely impressed by how well the month played out. They Will Kill You officially drops March 27th, and Meaghan and Arthur caught the early release the night before. The whole month had been female-led horror films, one after another, and as Meaghan put it, “this entire month has been women kicking people’s asses and I do appreciate that very much.“
It was not just this film, either. If you have been paying attention to South by Southwest this year, there is a quiet thread running through a chunk of the lineup: sisterhood, class rage, and rich people getting what they deserve.
Ready or Not 2, Forbidden Fruits, They Will Kill You. Two satanic cults in a row. Arthur clocked it immediately.
There’s like a hidden quote-unquote theme at the South by Southwest festival this year.
Whether it was intentional programming or just how the chips fell, it landed with a coherence that felt almost too clean to be accidental.
The Setup: One Building, One Hell of a Secret
The IMDB synopsis describes a woman taking a housekeeping job at an NYC high-rise and uncovering a history of disappearances. That is technically correct. It is also barely scratching the surface.
Asia Reaves, played by Zazie Beetz, has just been released after nearly a decade in prison. As a teenager, she shot her abusive father to protect herself and her younger sister, Maria. She did not kill him (which both hosts agreed was a real shame, given what we learn about the man). She ran, got caught anyway, and Maria was returned to their father’s custody. Years later, Maria goes missing after taking a job at the Virgil, a towering apartment building in New York City
Asia takes on a new identity, walks through the front door, and starts looking.
The building’s name is not incidental. Meaghan caught it right away. The Virgil is a direct reference to Dante’s Inferno, seven circles and all. The whole structure was designed around that, a literal representation of hell on earth with a satanic cult running the show. The cult has made a deal with the devil; they are effectively immortal, regenerating from almost anything until their names are struck from the pact.
To keep the deal going, they need regular sacrifices. The women who are not sacrificed are kept on as staff, doing the domestic work. Meaghan flagged that almost all of those women are women of color: “I was like, oof. That was weird. I’m assuming that was purposeful.” It is a detail the film does not fully unpack, but it lands hard.
Director Kirill Sokolov pulled the initial concept from real life. He and his wife moved to a new city in Russia, rented a flat in a massive building, and started joking that the whole place was probably run by a cult. Then he watched Rosemary’s Baby. “Oh my god,” he said.
I was in that building. I was in that same situation.
Two ideas collided, and a film was born.
The production was backed by Andy and Barbara Muschietti, who helmed both It films. Apparently, they read hundreds of scripts a year and rarely feel surprised. This one surprised them. They both wanted to see it made. Given what ends up on screen, that impulse makes total sense.
What Works: Choreography, Composition, and One Very Memorable Eyeball
The fight choreography is the undeniable centerpiece of this film, and we have to talk about it. The stunt team went all in. Every sequence is cleanly shot, fully visible, no murky darkness to hide the work. Meaghan was emphatic:
The stunt team as a whole deserves all of the flowers.
You can see every punch land, every weapon swing, every moment of physics-defying mayhem. They were clearly proud of what they built, and they had every right to be.
Arthur pegged the overall visual style as having a strong Edgar Wright influence, particularly in the opening sequences. Those snappy, choppy cuts stacked together. “Did Edgar Wright direct this movie?” he asked.
It has that same kinetic editing DNA, quick and confident and slightly stylized. Once you clock it, you cannot unsee it. Arthur said the moment it clicked for him, he just let go of any serious expectations and settled in: “I’m like, okay. I see what kind of movie this is gonna be.” That kind of early signal from a film is actually a gift. You know exactly how to watch it.
There is also a strong anime and manga energy running through the whole thing, particularly in how Asia is introduced and how her backstory gets told. Arthur described it as feeling like “someone had like an anime manga comic book in their head and they translated it into movie format.” The pacing, the dramatic framing, the way she holds a sword while her name gets announced. It is theatrical in the best way.
The set design deserves its own mention. The Virgil was built partly on real Cape Town locations and partly from scratch, with the interior constructed modularly, walls that could be moved, removed, and reconfigured to accommodate all the water, fire, rain, and general chaos the script demanded.
Meaghan appreciated how purposefully Asia uses the space around her: crawl spaces, tunnels, and the environment itself becomes a tool. She compared it favorably to Ready or Not 2, which she felt did not squeeze enough out of its massive resort setting.
And then there is the eyeball. Heather Graham’s eyeball, to be specific, which becomes its own thing entirely for about ten minutes of screen time. We are not exaggerating. Meaghan called it her third favorite element of the entire film.
It was incredible. It is hilarious. Weirdly, almost cute.
The eyeball rolls around, gets startled by a spider, and has its whole little moment. Arthur confirmed that at the South by Southwest premiere, the production team had an oversized basketball-sized version rolling around the red carpet with a fisheye camera inside it. People waved at it. People petted it. It was a choice, and it was the right one.
Zazie Beetz herself became something of a legend on set. She fights in virtually every scene, and reportedly, the crew started calling her a cyborg because of her endurance. Tom Felton (yes, that Tom Felton) apparently brought a ukulele to set and sang her silly songs about joining a cult to keep her spirits up during the grueling shoot.
Both hosts appreciated that the energy of a cast genuinely having fun bled through into the final film. “You almost feel it through the screen,” Arthur said.
Where It Loses You: The Third Act and an Accent of Uncertain Origin
Not everything lands. Meaghan found herself disengaging when the film hit its latter third, where the goofy factor tipped past the point he was willing to go with it.
I thought things got too goofy and too silly.
The final scenes, in particular, involving a pig head (we will leave it there), pushed past the film’s own internal logic of fun-but-grounded into something he found harder to follow. Some of the dialogue throughout also gave her pause. She knew it was not meant to be taken seriously, but “I was like, okay. This could have been reworked ever so slightly.“
Meaghan tracked with him on the pig head moment specifically: “I did not like that at all.” She loved the film overall, but even she drew a line somewhere.
The other major sticking point: Patricia Arquette’s accent. She plays Lily Woodhouse, one of the cult’s leaders, and she is doing… something. Meaghan could not place it for the first ten minutes.
She assumed it was meant to be Irish, but it moved in and out so strangely that he compared it to “an old fashioned movie star with that weird transatlantic accent that everybody in like the forties in films used to have.“
She acknowledged this might actually make sense given that the cult has been around since the 1930s, but he was not fully convinced. “It was so fucking bad. Sorry. It was terrible.” Arthur pointed out that Arquette has talked publicly about loving camp, so it may have been a deliberate choice. Either way, both hosts were caught off guard by it in a way that disrupted their immersion, at least early on.
Final Ratings and Whether You Should Go
Arthur gave it a seven out of ten on the show’s “digs” scale. He loved it. Fun, nonstop, great kills, a film you want to show people.
Meaghan landed at 5.5. She had a real time with it, but found herself losing the thread as things escalated, and does not feel a strong pull to revisit it solo.
The comparison both kept returning to was Guns Akimbo: ridiculous, fast, funny, not especially serious, easy to love precisely because it knows exactly what it is. If you liked Kill Bill for its style and choreography rather than its depth, this is your film. It wears that influence openly without being a copy.
“With the current hellscape that we’re living in,” Meaghan said,
if you’re looking for a fun time and you wanna go to the movie for like a funny sort of distraction, it’s a good choice.
That is probably the most honest pitch we can give you. It is not trying to be more than it is. It is very good at what it is. Go in expecting a blast, and that is what you will get. If you are on the fence and want another horror movie to watch tonight, check out our horror movie picker.