Zazie Beetz in They Will Kill You
THEY WILL KILL YOU
Is anyone else exhausted, and continually upset, by this year's plethora of movies in which women get the crap viciously kicked out of them?
I know, I know – it's 2026. I should be equally offended by the number of men aggressively pummeled on-screen. I am. But even when we know the physical abuse will end with them getting their deserved revenge, it doesn't make the sight of females getting brutally beaten (usually by male adversaries) any more bearable … and as a rule, we men kind of deserve our cinematic wallops. Already this year, audiences have watched women being bloodied and worse in Send Help, Scream VII, and Ready or Not 2: Here I Come. Director/co-writer Kirill Sokolov's They Want to Kill You is the latest to traffic in this detestable cycle. Yet just because lead Zazie Beetz proves herself a formidable ass-kicker doesn't mean that watching her character getting shot, stabbed, sliced, and in all ways assaulted for an hour-and-a-half is in any way fun. It's only the cognizant, amusingly ambulatory eyeball, optic nerve attached, that gets this gory, tiresome genre outing anywhere close to fun.
I caught Sokolov's C-grade Kill Bill (its script co-authored by Alex Litvak) less than a week after enduring the Ready or Not sequel, the latter of which is about two estranged sisters who have to make it to daylight while being hunted by power-hungry Satan worshipers who require human sacrifices. In truth, I don't know why I included that “the latter of which” mention – that's the exact plot of both Here I Come and They Will Kill You. (We know there are no new ideas in Hollywood; are they also no new ideas behind release dates that might've separated one film from the other?) The lone nod to originality in Sokolov's movie is that the assailants aren't simply trying to maintain their riches and status. They're trying to maintain their immortality, meaning that every time Beetz's avenger Asia Reaves, say, chops off someone's head or splits someone in two in sprays of obviously laugh-intended blood, her victims are miraculously able to regenerate minutes later. Admittedly, this is pretty funny when a full-grown body is sporting the potato-sized head of Heather Graham mid-evolution. It's also the eternally delightful Graham's eyeball that hops around on its own in order to spy on Asia and her little sister Maria (Myha'la), a lunatic diversion that I hope would tickle Sam Raimi.
Had They Will Kill You maintained this level of goofy WTF-ness, we might've been looking at a new horror-slapstick classic. But with those Asia executes being constantly reincarnated, the action becomes repetitive awfully early, and even the setting – a decaying luxury hotel Barton Fink-ian in its weathered blandness – doesn't supply the hoped-for chills. Patricia Arquette shows up, with a hit-and-miss Irish accent, as the hotel's superintendent, and gives one of her Severance-style performances in which you can't tell whether she's awesome or terrible; with Arquette, even knowing I might be wrong, I tend to always lean toward awesome. The soundtrack choices are at least blessedly free of '80s pop. (I groaned upon hearing “Total Eclipse of the Heart” in the latest Ready or Not.) It's gruesomely innocuous as all-get-out. I still would've traded my time at Sokolov's outing for 90 minutes of watching Zazie Beetz not getting repeatedly punched in the face and stabbed in the gut. I'd love to attribute my reaction to chivalry or offense. By this point, though, my displeasure is really just about boredom.
FORBIDDEN FRUITS
It's impossible to tell whether director/co-writer Meredith Alloway's Forbidden Fruits will enter the sub-genre, cult-classic pantheon of Heathers and Mean Girls. Based solely on one viewing, though, I kind of hope it does. This is the rare movie in which I didn't even see a trailer for it before my Saturday-afternoon screening, and I'm still not entirely sure what to make of the movie. Yet I can say that even though I couldn't necessarily determine a narrative a third of the way into this 104-minute oddity, I was thoroughly arrested by its brazenness and confidence, and consider at least two of its central quartet's performances among the most fearless I've seen in several years. Alloway's film is a mess. More movies should be this gloriously messy.
In the manner of Heathers' Veronica and Mean Girls' Cady, Forbidden Fruits' Pumpkin (Lola Tung) wants desperately to join the clique of nasty 20-somethings at her Texas mall's elite fashion stop: ringleader Apple (Lili Reinhart) and hangers-on Cherry (Victoria Pedretti) and Fig (Alexandra Shipp). The reason why will remain unclear for much of the movie – as will the entire plot of the movie, which gives us examples of mildly witchy behavior, definite bitchy behavior, and multiple examples of hostile exchanged loyalties before ending in über-bloody fashion. Yet I can't recall the last film I was this confused by – Pumpkin has ulterior motives for joining the clan? Mall culture is still a thing? – that kept me quite so breathless with anticipation. The script is based on co-screenwriter Lily Houghton's play Of the woman came the beginning of sin, and through her we all die, a title that's also prominently displayed on Apple's T-shirt in the climactic scene, and rarely have I so wanted to dive into an adaptation's precedent to understand what was happening.
What we know is happening, however, is right in front of us, beginning with the four central performances that are almost frighteningly dialed-in in terms of emotional power and persuasiveness – and these leads are funny, to boot. Reinhart, going even beyond where Kim Walker and Rachel McAdams left off, delivers stunning Queen Bee energy that's forever surprising in terms of where empathy lies, and Pedretti is like the Pamela Anderson of The Last Showgirl meshing with the Pamela Anderson of Lily James' bio-pic interpretation; you laugh, and immediately feel bad for laughing. Flaws and all, and a few of the narrative-driven ones are biggies, I was knocked sideways by the unanticipated, unpredictable pleasures of Forbidden Fruits, and even though the mid-credits tag with Gabrielle Union felt unnecessary, it also felt exceedingly welcome. While I doubt that the film's box office will merit sequels, I love that Union's presence initiated a rush of sequels in my head.
