Zazie Beetz Fights Through Fire in They Will Kill You

“‘They Will Kill You’ is an action movie that is also a horror movie that has a bit of a comedy in it.”

Says director Kirill Sokolov about his latest movie, which he also wrote. “It has a lot of stunts, a lot of action,” he continues. “In every scene, something is happening. Our first goal was to do as much as possible practically. Zazie [Beetz] and our cast wanted to be involved as much as possible, so they trained and they did a lot.”

Zazie Beetz, who plays the film’s main character, Asia, trained for four months prior to the start of principal photography, including three weeks in Cape Town. In the blood-soaked, high-octane horror-action-comedy, Beetz plays a young woman who must survive the night at the Virgil, a demonic cult’s mysterious and twisted death-trap of a lair, before becoming their next offering in a uniquely brazen, big screen battle of epic kills and wickedly dark humor. The film also stars Myha’La, Paterson Joseph, Tom Felton, Heather Graham, and Patricia Arquette.

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“Actually I was shooting a different movie in Cape Town, and I started training when I was there, then I went home for a month and got a trainer, Michael Olajide, who’s incredible,” shares Beetz, whose previous credits include “Deadpool” and the animated series “Invincible.” “When I was home, five days a week I’d train with him for about two hours, just getting the boxing motion as ingrained in my body as possible. Then I went to set and I was doing stunt training every day for three weeks before we started shooting. We would train, but the focus was kind of more on a little bit of conditioning, and then learning the fights, which ends up being a bit more choreography-based, so it’s less physically demanding than actually working out, weight lifting and doing that kind of thing. We were doing it all and your girl was tired! But they were really big on not burning me out, which I really appreciated.” 

The filmmakers were determined to capture as much of the action in-camera, including practical effects, one of the most impressive being the use of real fire in a huge fight sequence where most of the cast are involved.

“We have this one fight scene that was incredible and big that has fire, and from day one everybody told us, ‘No, no, no, forget about real fire. It takes too long, it’s too dangerous, too expensive. We’ll do CG fire,’” shares Sokolov. “But even with all the amazing VFX, you feel that it’s VFX, it doesn’t give you that feeling of danger on the screen, that tension. We found a way to do it practically, and the entire fight scene is real Zazie running with real fire and just whooping people, and the scene itself is just unbelievable. When people watch it, probably many of them won’t believe that it’s made in-camera.”

Heather Graham, who plays Sharon, one of the Virgil’s residents, was so inspired by Beetz’s willingness to perform her own stunts that she asked director Sokolov if she could do some of her own, as well. “It was fun for me,” says Graham of the “challenging and fun” experience of filming “They Will Kill You.” “In my career, I’ve done some fights and some stunts, but nothing compared to this movie. I mean, there’s long fight scenes that are really intense and really dramatic, and there’s humor and it’s violent.”

Sokolov and his stunt and fight choreographers crafted each fight sequence differently, evoking fight styles from samurai to spaghetti western to straight horror, escalating along with the story and moving the camera differently so that it, too, becomes almost a character in the film. 

Everyone is invited to visit The Virgil in “They Will Kill You,” now showing only in cinemas.