They Will Kill You: Inside Its Show-Stopping Action Sequences The year may be young, but Kirill Sokolov and Zazie Beetz’s “flaming axe” sequence in They Will Kill You is already a contender for the finest action set piece of 2026. The Russian physicist-turned-filmmaker first captured Hollywood’s attention with his 2018 debut, Why Don’t You Just Die!, which won several awards at 2019’s Fantasia Film Festival. After his sophomore effort, No Looking Back (2021), Sokolov relocated to Los Angeles, where he partnered with screenwriter Alex Litvak to craft his first U.S. project, They Will Kill You. The action horror-comedy follows Asia Reaves (Zazie Beetz), an ex-con who adopts a false identity to work as a housekeeper in New York City’s enigmatic Virgil building. The story is inspired by Sokolov and his wife’s experiences living in a Russian apartment complex a decade earlier. Their apartment, like the Virgil building, became a hub of tension and paranoia, with elderly tenants gossiping and harboring wild cats. Sokolov and his wife jokingly referred to their situation as a cult that would one day target them, a concept that evolved into the film’s premise. The film’s central conflict begins when a cultist infiltrates Asia’s apartment through a hidden passage, a detail rooted in Sokolov’s past. During a kitchen renovation, he discovered a secret hole leading to his neighbor’s apartment, a twist reminiscent of Rosemary’s Baby. Though he initially forgot about it, rewatching the film years later reignited the idea, which eventually became a key plot point in They Will Kill You. Asia’s climactic battle against the cult culminates in the film’s iconic flaming axe sequence. Sokolov initially wanted to stage the scene practically but faced resistance from producers concerned about safety.#zazie_beetz #kirill_sokolov #virgil_building #nocturna #andy_muschietti
