They Will Kill You

We dive into the brand-new 2026 Amazon release ‘They Will Kill You,’ filmed in Cape Town, and talk about why the trailer (and Patricia Arquette) pulled us in.

We break down the movie’s hyper-stylized, Tarantino/Raimi/Rodriguez vibe, martial-arts-heavy set pieces, and throwback gore—plus how much we admired the practical effects and cinematography. We discuss Zazie Beetz carrying the film, the thin sister-family drama setup, and the central premise: a satanic, ultra-wealthy cult in The Virgil building whose members can regenerate after being “killed.”

From the samurai-sword bloodbath to the sentient eyeball gag, the fire-axe cafeteria fight, and the pig-headed devil ritual, we debate whether it’s fun homage or too derivative, and who we’d recommend it to for a movie night.

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They Will Kill You (2026)

Episode 501, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: This week we are doing a brand new movie, 2026, They Will Kill You. Was this a Netflix one or was this a Shudder one? Yep, it’s an Amazon one. So yeah, this one, uh, was filmed in Cape Town, South Africa. I thought that was interesting. And just came out in March of this year, so it’s pretty fresh.

You, uh, picked this one. I had never even heard of it, ’cause I’m really not up on the new stuff. So, uh, let me know what, what, what were your thoughts, uh, going in? Had you seen this before?

Craig: No, but I had seen the trailer for it in the theater. I see so few movies in the theater anymore, but honestly, I don’t even remember what movie I was seeing.

But I remember seeing this trailer and I thought that it looked cool for a big horror movie. But the big draw for me was Patricia Arquette.

Yeah.

Craig: I’m just a big fan of hers. I, I always have been. She’s always been cool. I don’t know how old she is, but I feel like we kind of grew up with her. I think she’s probably a little bit older than we are, but-

Todd: Yeah

Craig: but she was always just kind of that cool chick in movies, but also in life. Like- She’s kind of the epitome of like I don’t give a fuck. Like she just does whatever she wants to do and she just is who she is and she’s a cool person and I like her. So I was drawn to that and then it’s been kind of a low-key summer for me ’cause I’ve been recuperating from a relatively minor surgery but I’ve been spending a lot of time at home and watching a lot of movies and this popped up on Amazon and I remembered having seen the trailer and so I watched it.

And when I was watching it, there were just moments where something would happen and it’s, it’s more than something would happen. It’s like the dynamic would change. I would just get a huge smile on my face- Uh-huh … either out of amusement or, “Oh, Todd’s gonna like this.”

Like

Craig: And, and thinking about you specifically but anybody who’s kind of into horror and the kind of things

I, I don’t know. I thought that this would appeal specifically to your sensibilities but I, I think that it, it could be broadly appreciated as well.

Todd: It very much does and honestly not really as a horror movie. I just kept thinking of Quentin Tarantino through the whole thing.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: It just smells like something he would do.

It’s wild, it’s over the top. It’s very much a throwback to ’70s era Asian cinema in many ways. There’s lots of martial arts style action in here. There’s over the top violence but it’s very stylized in the way that he tends to stylize it. I would say him, a bit of Sam Raimi sometimes.

Yeah.

Todd: A little bit of Robert Rodriguez, you know, as well.

All three of those guys clearly inspired this director, Kirill Sokolov, a Russian director who did a couple things before this. Nothing I’ve seen but some things I’d kinda like to see after seeing this. He did a m- a movie called Why Don’t You Just Die, which looks again like a very Tarantino-esque type film.

It’s billed on, uh, IMDb as a dark comedy farce slapstick drama thriller. Which this kinda is too I would say.

Yeah.

Todd: Yeah, d- I mean this is definitely a horror movie because there’s elements of the supernatural in here and of course there’s a lot of killing and, and things like that but- I mean, it’s also heavy on action, and it moves, and moves, and moves, and it’s snarky, and it’s jokey, and like I said earlier, very stylized in its presentation, in its cinematography, in the colors, and the, the vibe of the ca- you know, the vibe is just generally so easy to pinpoint that, I mean, I think a lot of people might consider this to be maybe even almost a little too derivative.

I have to admit, I did get a little bored about halfway through, because once you kinda know what’s happening and what’s going on, there aren’t too many surprises left for you, and it’s just becomes one of those action-y things where this one person’s gotta battle her way out of a bad situation against people who are very hard to kill.

And for me, that gets a little old after a while. I do kind of… I was hoping for more twists and turn- and there are a couple, but yeah, I was just kinda hoping for a little more story, I would say, than I ended up getting out of it. But it was, uh, really fun to watch, and so, uh, I’m really excited to talk about it today.

Craig: Yeah, on all of those points that you mentioned, the cinematography, and the vibe, and the colors, and, and all of that stuff, I felt like it was executed so well. I mean, I- I’m probably gonna really hype this movie up, and, and I mean to, ’cause I really enjoyed it. I thought it was super fun to watch. I think it would be super fun to watch with other people, especially the action sequences.

There’s a lot of like, oh, moments. Like- Yeah … like, it’s, it’s a fun movie. I think it would be a fun movie to react to with other people and to see other people’s reactions to it. ‘Cause all the things you’ve said, it… I immediately thought of Tarantino as well, but I also thought, well, the reason I think of Tarantino is because I’m not really well-versed in the cinema that he was inspired by.

Mm. I’m sure that this filmmaker was inspired by Tarantino, but potentially, you know, a lot of the conventions, especially the martial arts and stuff, are stuff that Tarantino was inspired by, by like you said, those films in the ’70s and whatnot.

Right.

Craig: Um, but I just thought on, despite it potentially not being perfect, I thought it kinda nailed it.

The, the, the place where I will disagree with you is I didn’t get bored, and I was with you right up to… Okay, so you were saying, you know, once it becomes somebody just kind of walking through these action pieces, a- and you didn’t say it exactly like that.

Todd: That’s it. Yeah, that’s what I meant more or less.

Craig: It, it gets a little repetitive or boring. And then you said- Something like unless it’s really good or something. And, and I thought that these were. I, I, I concur with you and I feel like we’ve watched movies where eventually if it’s just the same action over and over again, it can… You start looking at your watch.

But I was genuinely engaged in these because of the combination of all of those things. Like, I’m thinking, I don’t know, there’s a bunch of big ones. One in particular, which probably would be around the point in the movie where I would imagine you would’ve started getting bored because we’ve already seen some big action pieces at this point.

But there’s a scene in a dark, like, cafeteria that ultimately-

Todd: Oh, yeah …

Craig: ends up being like a fight scene that we’ve seen except for the, it’s shot entirely differently because it’s almost exclusively in the dark, and the director and the cinematographer and the designers do so much with the way that …