News

Writer/director Kirill Sokolov's feature debut Why Don't You Just Die! is a stylish and grisly dark comedy about greed and corruption in modern Russia. Set almost entirely within a small Moscow apartment over the course of one day, the story involves Matvey (Aleksandr Kuznetsov), a young man charged by his girlfriend, Olya (Evgeniya Kregzhde ) to murder her abusive father, Andrey (Vitaliy Khaev) . Naturally, this proves more difficult than anticipated, and within the first five minutes the film has wasted no time in delivering some eye-popping and expertly choreographed violence.

Through flashbacks we learn more about our players. Andrey is a corrupt cop with more than a few skeletons in his closet; Olya's motivations are less about revenge than sheer avarice; and when Andrey's...

Russian director Kirill Sokolov wears his influences on his sleeve in Why Don’t You Just Die!, a revenge tale in which a boyfriend will try to fulfill his girlfriend’s (Evgeniya Kregzhde as Olya) wish: kill her father Andrey (Vitaliy Khaev), a rough police detective who apparently raped her when she was just a teenager. A highly stylish movie that riffs on westerns, torture porn, crime and action cinema, and that’s mostly set in the apartment of Olya’s parents (Elena Shevchenko is the mother), Why Don’t You Just Die! constantly mixes tones as well, ranging from gory and exaggerated violence and a dose of horror to a lot of comedy. Not to mention the fact that it uses non-linear narrative to...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Stars: Vitaliy Khaev, Aleksandr Kuznetsov, Evgeniya Kregzhde, Mikhail Gorevoy, Elena Shevchenko, Igor Grabuzov, Aleksandr Domogarov, Ilya Gavrilenkov, Vasiliy Kopeikin | Written and Directed by Kirill Sokolov

Do you remember The Raid? If you’ve seen it you probably won’t ever forget it. Now imagine taking the brutality and physical violence of that film and transpose it to one apartment and only a handful of people. That’s Why Don’t You Just Die! in a nutshell.

The film tells the story of Matvei, who ends up at the door of corrupt detective Andrei after his resentful daughter asks Matvei to kill him for her. The reason? She claims that her father has repeatedly raped her since she was a child. Now Matvei does what every longing boyfriend would, he says yes. Only Matvei doesn’t bank on things going south quite so fast. He also didn’t bank on Andrei fighting back,...

The coronavirus has made everyone a bit sensitive, with good reason, inspiring memes around such now-sensitive movie titles as delayed 007 entry “No Time to Die” and Emily Ting’s culture-shock indie “Go Back to China.” To this list of inappropriately named movies we might add “Why Don’t You Just Die!” — except that Russian director Kirill Sokolov’s pitch-black horror debut, which nixed its April 10 theatrical plans in favor of a straight-to-streaming option two weeks later, is the kind of deranged Grand Guignol bloodbath that’s wrong in all the right ways. So, in a sense, it fits.

Set almost entirely in a corrupt cop’s Moscow apartment, “Why Don’t You Just Die!” is a neatly conceived dark-comedy chamber piece — à la the Wachowski siblings’ clockwork-perfect queer-noir “Bound” or Sidney Lumet’s airtight but otherwise diabolical “Deathtrap” — in which a simple setup spirals into unimaginably twisted mayhem. A tough, agitated young...

Matvey (Aleksandr Kuznetsov) just wants to take his girlfriend Olya (Evgeniya Kregzhde) on a date. At least that’s what he tells her father Andrey (Vitaliy Khaev) when he opens the door. We know it isn’t quite true, though, considering his pulse is racing and his grip on the hammer hidden behind his back is tightening. Because a neighbor is walking to her apartment across the hall to provide way too compelling a witness, he can’t just take a swing and leave. So Matvey enters upon invitation, locks the door behind him, and readies himself once more to do what he came to do … when Olya’s mother Tasha (Elena Shevchenko) appears to offer coffee and tea. What can he do now but sit and wait to hopefully leave?

While the awkward silence and surprised scoffs upon learning Matvey’s would-be victim is a police detective make for a humorously discomforting scenario,...

"It might be because of the work I do, but I pay close attention to my daughter's friends." Arrow Films has unleashed an official trailer for a super-violent, dark comedy from Russia called (for the UK/Us release) Why Don't You Just Die!. The original title in Russian translates directly to Dad, Die - a bit too short. It's the feature directorial debut of a filmmaker named Kirill Sokolov. "Shades of early Tarantino, Edgar Wright and Sam Raimi abound in this violent, stylish and riotously entertaining slice of family life, Moscow style, described as 'a splatterpunk action comedy drenched in gleefully dark Russian humor.'" Sounds good? Andrei, a detective and the world's most horrible father, brings together a terrible group of people in his apartment: his resentful actress daughter, an angry thug, and a cheated cop. Each one has a reason to want revenge. The film stars Aleksandr Kuznetsov,...

Evil cannot touch me... This is the mantra of our poor, clueless hero, Matvey (Aleksandr Kuznetsov) as he prepares to enter the home of his girlfriend's family in director Kirill Sokolov's violent, kinetic action explosion, Why Don't You Just Die! (the exclamation point is part of the title), but we soon learn that he couldn't be more wrong as a simple visit turns extremely bloody over the course of ninety-five tightly plotted minutes. Matvey has sought out the parents of his girlfriend Olya (Evgeniya Kregzhde) to avenge her innocence after hearing that her childhood wasn't as safe and secure as he would've liked to assume. Unfortunately for him, everyone in the family has a secret they are trying to protect, and he's an unwitting pawn...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

As far as high-concept features go, the idea of setting a story in one location may be the most intriguing of all. Do you choose an open loft to breakaway from traditional confines? Do you set it in a sprawling house, so that each room can potentially hold its own brand of horrors? Or do you cheat ever so slightly, by jumping, via flashback, to one or two other locations without ever exploring the world as a whole? While it does step into that last arena ever so slightly, Why Don't You Just Die! is an immensely thrilling tale of two men trying to kill each other.

When Matvei (Aleksandr Kuznetsov) arrives at a nondescript Russian apartment, he does so with one goal in mind: to kill Andrei (Vitaliy Khayev ). The task was handed to him by his girlfriend, Olya (Evgeniya Kregzhde), after she unloads upon him the tragedy of her childhood.

Stars: Vitaliy Khaev, Aleksandr Kuznetsov, Evgeniya Kregzhde, Mikhail Gorevoy, Elena Shevchenko, Igor Grabuzov, Aleksandr Domogarov, Ilya Gavrilenkov, Vasiliy Kopeikin | Written and Directed by Kirill Sokolov

Do you remember The Raid? If you’ve seen it you probably won’t ever forget it. Now imagine taking the brutality and physical violence of that film and transpose it to one apartment and only a handful of people. That’s Why Don’t You Just Die! in a nutshell.

The film tells the story of Matvei, who ends up at the door of corrupt detective Andrei after his resentful daughter asks Matvei to kill him for her. The reason? She claims that her father has repeatedly raped her since she was a child. Now Matvei does what every longing boyfriend would, he says yes. Only Matvei doesn’t bank on things going south quite so fast. He also didn’t bank on Andrei fighting back,...