Most of us have lived somewhere we couldn’t stand — and for one filmmaker, that experience ended up shaping a buzzy new horror film.
Horror-action-comedy They Will Kill You has been generating a lot of chatter, and there’s an unexpected reason why: it’s loosely inspired by real life.
Rather than drawing on a typical “based on a true story” tale, the movie’s origins trace back to director Kirill Sokolov’s former apartment.
They Will Kill You stars Tom Felton and centers on a housekeeper working in a New York City high-rise — until she starts uncovering unsettling details about the building’s past.
Before long, she realizes there’s ritualistic behavior happening among the tenants, and the situation escalates into outright violence when she’s attacked.
That leaves one question hanging over the night: can she make it out alive after stumbling into the cult’s secretive, booby-trapped hideout?
Zazie Beetz leads the cast as maid Asia, while Felton plays Kevin — a member of the Satanic cult she finds herself up against.
Speaking with People, Sokolov explained that he and his wife rented the apartment around a decade ago, and he said he sensed something ‘strange’ about the 15-floor building almost immediately. According to him, the residents were ‘65 or over, and mostly lonely ladies.’
Then came a discovery that pushed the place from odd to alarming: ‘a hole behind the kitchen cabinet that [led] to the neighbor’s apartment.’
For a while, he said the ‘creepiness’ became more of a running gag than anything else, and the couple would joke: “Okay, we probably rented our apartment inside of the cult and they will come after us and they will sacrifice us.”
It wasn’t until he watched Rosemary’s Baby that things clicked — a viewing he said effectively sparked the idea. After that, he talked it through with his friend Alex Litvak, and the two went on to write the script.
In the film, Asia Reeves runs into echoes of that same nightmare: an apartment that seems ordinary at first, only to reveal something far darker.
Sokolov has since moved on from what he calls the ‘horror’ apartment, and he also suggested the actors may not even be aware of the personal backstory behind the project.
Released last month, the movie currently holds a 64% score on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s now available to rent digitally, giving anyone who missed it in theaters a chance to catch up.
And for viewers who don’t love nonstop terror, there’s a silver lining: it’s been described as ‘gleefully violent,’ which means the mayhem is balanced with plenty of comedy.