Don’t Kill It: Watch It!

By Dave B.

​Have you ever wanted to see Dolph Lundgren as a socially conscious demon hunter with an arsenal of non-lethal weaponry? If so, then Don’t Kill It (2017, currently on Netflix) is the movie for you! The movie’s premise is simple, but clever: in a small Mississippi town with an extremely well-armed populace, there’s a demon inhabiting people’s bodies and if you kill the host body, the demon inhabits you. Bloody mayhem (and some laughs) ensue. Enter Lundgren, a vape smoking, demon hunter who gives douchebags harsh lessons on the meaning of consent. Profit.

​There are a couple of point in Don’t Kill It where the quality of the script slipped into a subpar range, but Lundgren’s charm and dry wit usually got things back on track fairly quickly. The movie is HYPER-violent and not in a campy way. There’s an extremely high body count and most of the deaths are very graphic, so this movie certainly isn’t for everyone. If you can look past some uneven writing and lots of gore doesn’t bother you, Don’t Kill It is actually a lot of fun. The performances are generally on point (especially Lundgren’s) and appropriately silly. The setting in backwoods Mississippi provides the perfect ambiance for any horror movie. There’s enough action and suspense that the film’s 93 minutes fly past. And what really makes me like the movie was the fact that having the protagonists do their best to avoid killing the demon’s host body is a surprisingly effective plot device. Traditional horror rules have to get tossed out of the window when you’re severely limited in how you can defend yourself and others. 

​Don’t Kill It  is a B-movie that embraces what it is. Despite a low budget (IMDb estimates $3.5 million), it manages to be creative and entertaining . I can’t ask for much more than that in a film. I recommend this movie to viewers who have a strong stomach and a fairly macabre sense of humor. And of course to fans of Dolph Lundgren. 

​Rating: 6/10