‘They Will Kill You’ thin on story, but plenty of slapstick, gore galore

A young woman, an exclusive New York apartment building with a dark history, a satanic cult — this setup might sound familiar to horror aficionados, but Rosemary’s Baby this is not.

They Will Kill You doesn’t start with a gradual realization that something might be off. It starts by showing us the Virgil — the cursed apartment in question — with a glowing red pentagram on the roof and a relief sculpture of a horned, winged Lucifer on the front door.

Russian filmmaker Kirill Sokolov (also known for the emphatically titled Why Don’t You Just Die!) is a direct kind of guy. There will be arterial blood spray before we hit the 12-minute mark.

Sokolov, who co-scripts with Alex Litvak, is working the pulpy action-comedy-horror genre, in which the decapitation of a villain can feel both sinister and slapsticky. This tonal balance is tricky to get right: Sam Raimi (Evil Dead) can do it, but Sokolov flails.

They Will Kill You is too goofy to be scary and too sloppy for consistent comic payoff. It is, however, cheerfully violent and defiantly gross, and star Zazie Beetz (Joker) rules as the blood-drenched, unstoppable heroine Asia.

Asia arrives at the Virgil on a rain-soaked night, ostensibly answering an ad for a housemaid. The apartment’s ominous superintendent Lilith Woodhouse (Patricia Arquette, with a wandering Irish accent), takes Asia on a little tour, showing her the security system — everyone is essentially locked in — and introducing her to some of the building’s tenants, interchangeably awful one-percenters (including Heather Graham and Tom Felton). She points out some of the other maids, all anonymous Black and brown women.

During this walkthrough, Asia keeps overhearing talk of “offerings.”

After she drops off to sleep in her new quarters, she is menaced by figures in pig masks and black hooded cloaks. Asia is no sacrificial lamb, though.

Once she gets out her machete, she’s chopping off hands, feet and heads all over the place. This survive-the-night ordeal will be complicated, however, by the fact Asia’s adversaries are effectively immortal. Thanks to a literal deal with the devil, they can regenerate, their wounds healing, their limbs reattaching, and Asia will be forced to kill them again and again.

This scenario might work if the setups were more varied and the fight choreography better. As it is, it just means the conflict — no matter how insanely gruesome — remains curiously tension-free.

Sokolov makes clear homages to the cramped corridor battle of Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy and the “roaring rampage of revenge” of Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill flicks. There are carpeted Kubrickian hallways and — weirdly — even a bit of a Wes Anderson vibe in a cartoony cross-section shot.

Unfortunately, there’s nothing much going on under this cinematic style.

Sokolov (barely) sketches in a traumatic personal backstory. Ten years ago, in a moment of crisis, Asia abandoned her sister, Maria (Industry’s Myha’la), and is now determined to save her.

On the political level, there’s a nod to the ever-popular eat-the-rich genre. All the super-wealthy satanists are silly and ghastly, but we barely meet them before they’re getting repeatedly chopped up.

The maids, meanwhile, also remain nameless and silent, making this potential subtext feel more like perfunctory box-ticking.

There’s an odd lack of follow-through even with the fun stuff.

At one point, we’re told that eternal life is so tedious that each level of The Virgil is dedicated to a separate vice. We get a glimpse of the orgy floor, but the other floors don’t even get a mention. (What might they involve? Covetousness? Smoking?)

Sadly, we seem to spend most of our time in the ductwork system and the elevator shaft. While Beetz has loads of screen presence and is impressively tough in a tight corner, it would be great if They Will Kill You gave her more to do.

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