Welcome to another edition of Trust Me, I Watch Everything, a weekly guide to all the new movies released on Friday. I'm Brett Arnold, film critic and host of At the Movies Again, a weekly Siskel & Ebert-style movie review show.

It's a particularly violent and bloody week for cinema. In theaters, a pair of smaller releases put up a fight against the box office juggernaut that is Project Hail Mary, including the Zazie Beetz horror-action-comedy They Will Kill You and a witchy Diablo Cody-produced gem in Forbidden Fruits.

At home, you can rent or buy one of the most ingenious and hilarious movies of the year, Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, which doesn't require you to have seen the series to enjoy it, and the latest spook-a-blast affair from iconic filmmaker Sam Raimi, Send Help.

And on streaming services you're likely already paying for, ballerina action movie Pretty Lethal debuts on Prime Video. Over on Hulu, there's a new Vince Vaughn time travel action-comedy called Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice.

Read on, as there's a lot more, and there's always something for everyone.

• What to watch in theaters

• Movies newly available to rent or buy

• Movies newly available on streaming services you may already have

🎥 What to watch in theaters

My recommendation: They Will Kill You

Why you should see it: They Will Kill You is stunningly similar to a movie released just last week, Ready or Not 2, part of an "eat the rich" subgenre that's so prolific right now. Luckily, this one channels its "rich people are evil Satanists who want to sacrifice you so they can keep living the high life" in such specific and fun ways that it actually works better than a lot of other recent attempts. It's basically a live-action cartoon that draws as much from Kill Bill as from Sam Raimi's horror oeuvre. It's a one-(wo)man, army-style badass action movie, an occult horror flick and a splatter comedy all at once, not to mention a class-based social commentary.

The plot: A woman (Zazie Beetz) answers a help-wanted ad to be a housekeeper in a mysterious high-rise in New York City, not realizing she is entering a community that has seen a number of disappearances over the years and may be under the grip of a Satanic cult. She's there to find her sister who she abandoned years ago.

That set-up is merely fodder for Beetz to kill people in various violent ways, and the movie provides that in spades, from its lengthy blood-spurts to its decapitations and (spoiler alert) reanimations. The cast is also unexpectedly stacked: Tom Felton, who you likely know as Draco Malfoy, plays one of the foils, alongside Heather Graham and Patricia Arquette.

In short, They Will Kill You is an unexpectedly good "one of these," which is to say, another movie in which a final girl must violently kill her way out of a Satanic situation. The fact that we got two movies with this exact premise in as many weeks, and what that means as a temperature check on American society, is open to interpretation.

What other critics are saying: They're split! David Fear at Rolling Stone writes, "Beetz deserves a better, sturdier showcase, as do us fans of exploitation movies that lace their violent, giddy, gory choreography with more than just cheap dopamine dumps." Adds Clarisse Loughrey at the Independent: "Zazie Beetz must be exhausted. Not only did she train for four months to play They Will Kill You’s Asia Reaves, she also had to carry the entire damn film on her shoulders." The Hollywood Reporter's Angie Han dinged the film for its lack of complexity, but noted that its gory scenes are delivered with enough "gusto to sate even the most bloodthirsty filmgoer."

How to watch: They Will Kill You is now playing in theaters nationwide.

Get tickets

But that's not all ...

Forbidden Fruits: Forbidden Fruits is a Diablo Cody-produced dark comedy adaptation of an off-Broadway play about a group of young women who start a coven while working at a Free People-like store in a mall. The movie plays like a mash-up of Mean Girls and The Craft, with the casual cruelty of a Jawbreaker or Heathers, and the social commentary on capitalism of Dawn of the Dead. It's got a lot on its mind about female friendships and commercialized femininity, and it's all conveyed through witty dialogue that never feels didactic. It features incredible performances from Riverdale's Lili Reinhart, Victoria Pedretti of You, X-Men: Apocalypse's Alexandra Shipp and The Summer I Turned Pretty's Lola Tung. The third act gets surprisingly nasty, and that's when it really won me over. Get tickets.

💸 Movies newly available to rent or buy

My recommendation: Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie

Why you should see it: You do not need to have seen a second of the Nirvanna the Band the Show television series or the webseries that preceded it to enjoy the extremely funny hijinks of Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, an idiosyncratic indie comedy masterpiece that's somehow also full of "how did they do that?!" movie magic despite its miniscule budget level. It's nearly impossible to describe, but I can try!

The series is a Canadian mockumentary sitcom created by Matt Johnson, now best known as the writer/director/star of the 2023 film Blackberry, and musician/writer Jay McCarrol, who play exaggerated versions of themselves. The show follows the best friends as they pull elaborate public stunts in Toronto to get their band a gig at the Rivoli (a local bar/venue that isn't worthy of such clamor), despite never actually writing any music. There's also an element of Jackass-style pranking directed at unsuspecting civilians, as the antics often unfold in public on Toronto's streets. Watching people react to it is another layer of the gag.

Each episode sees their harebrained scheme to book a show go incredibly and hilariously wrong. The episodes are also modeled after different extremely popular American sitcoms or movies, and therefore full of references that range from the overt to the subtle.

The movie is the exact same thing at feature length, and the inclusion of time travel means that it is full of allusions to Back to the Future. That's both funny and impressive in terms of a rights-clearing and practical filmmaking level, as the movie folds in on itself and the characters from the future interact with their 2008 counterparts. There's even a crazy stunt that makes you wonder how the hell they managed to pull it off. The blending of clear fiction with actual man-on-the-street footage is part of what makes it so unique and unlike anything you've ever seen.

I hadn't seen the show at all until after watching the movie, and now I'm an obsessive fan. Consider this a a rare cult item that feels instantly accessible to all who watch it — though people who will appreciate the characters having their walls plastered with Criterion Collection film posters are bound to get the most out of it.

What other critics are saying: It's a hit! The Los Angeles Times' Robert Abele writes, "Johnson is nothing if not a punchy ringmaster of deadpan humor and his grab-bag mindset generates enough goodwill to appreciate the DIY brashness of it all." Nick Schager at The Daily Beast says, "No matter the out-of-this-world nature of their adventure, they remain an amusing and endearingly down-to-Earth doofus duo."

How to watch: Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie is now available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Prime Video and other VOD platforms.

Watch on Apple TV

My bonus recommendation: Send Help

Why you should see it: Evil Dead mastermind Sam Raimi returns to the genre that made him, marking his first horror flick since 2009's wonderful Drag Me to Hell, and his first R-rated affair since 1997's The Gift.

Send Help is a survival horror film about a meek employee and Survivor lover, Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams), and her insufferable boss (the increasingly prevalent Dylan O'Brien), who become stranded on a deserted island. As the only survivors of a plane crash, they must overcome past grievances and work together to survive as power dynamics are completely inverted. It's like Triangle of Sadness but homed in on modern-day office culture and flipping that gendered power imbalance that can exist in the workplace.

The bad news? The film, as most do these days, relies far too heavily on lousy digital effects, from the backgrounds to CGI wild boars to terrible-looking digital compositing, as a hilarious amount of blood is splashed onto McAdams's face.

There are enough of his directorial flourishes throughout — as well as running gags; keen-eyed viewers will notice both Bruce Campbell and the 1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88 in there somewhere — to make it feel enough like a Raimi film. He even somehow sneaks a Deadite-looking zombie into the proceedings.

It's broad and silly stuff that's completely elevated by not only its director's depraved, slapstick sensibilities but also its two stars, who are both having so much fun in their roles that it really ups the ante on how often you'll be laughing and/or screaming. There's a hilarious puking scene that bests all other Raimi puke scenes, and that's saying something. It's probably trashier than you're expecting from the trailers, which is also a plus in my book. It's got some great twists.

It truly feels as if McAdams was game for whatever craziness was thrown at her, and she excels in the role as we see her character morph under her new circumstances. O'Brien is so good at playing the sniveling asshole you immediately hate, and his shift is similarly delightful to behold. He's quickly becoming one of the most exciting actors these days, after a killer 2025 that included amazing dual performances in Twinless and a terrific turn in the under-seen Anniversary.

Send Help is a two-hander that feels like it's engineered to be a performance showcase for its pair of leads, and thankfully, they're both more than up to the task. It's also a treat to see Raimi flex his skills on material that's beneath his pay grade at this point — he's the man behind the original live-action Tobey Maguire Spider-Man movies and the latest Doctor Strange movie, after all — but far more in my wheelhouse. Having iconic composer Danny Elfman on board doesn't hurt, either. What year is it again?!

What other critics are saying: It's a hit! Clarisse Loughrey at the Independent writes that the film ultimately "becomes the best of both worlds: indulgent Raimi splatter fueled by a satisfying touch of righteous rage." IndieWire's Alison Foreman calls it "wickedly lovable with the potential to be timeless," adding that it's "controlled delirium microwaved on high heat. At 66, Raimi reminds us who he was when he made horror-comedy history with Evil Dead II and, more important, why his voice still matters."

How to watch: Send Help is now available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Prime Video and other VOD platforms.

Watch on Apple TV

But that's not all ...

• How to Make a Killing: This is a remake of the 1949 black comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets, starring Glen Powell as a blue-collar man disowned at birth by his obscenely wealthy family who will stop at nothing to reclaim his inheritance, no matter how many relatives stand in his way. Margaret Qualley steals the show as the sexy, menacing femme fatale; anytime she's onscreen, the movie is electric. When she's not, it's fairly limp, and the energy shift to lame broad caricature comedy about rich failsons, whom Powell ends up taking out one by one, is always disappointing. In this case, you're better off watching the original, in which Alec Guinness portrays all the victims, a far more clever take on the aristocracy's borderline inbred nature. Rent or buy.

📺 Movies newly available on streaming services you may already have

My recommendation: Pretty Lethal

Why you should watch it: Pretty Lethal is, somehow, yet another movie in which a bunch of young women are forced to kill folks who want them dead, although this one doesn't try to be "about" anything bigger than a silly showcase for some stylized violence. There are no evil rich people who are secretly Satanists here, and thank God for that, as this simpler approach allows a fun premise to flourish.

In the film, five ballerinas find themselves in a fight for their lives when they seek shelter at a mysterious roadside inn that's run by a former ballet prodigy and current Hungarian mobster played by Uma Thurman. The women become witnesses to a crime committed by the thugs at the hotel, and must fight to survive.

Simply put, Pretty Lethal does a much better job than that John Wick spin-off Ballerina at justifying why we're watching an action movie starring a bunch of ballerinas. The girls here are forced to use their "very particular set of skills," to quote Liam Neeson, which in this case, is their prima ballerina dance training.

It may only manifest in a couple of sequences that actually deliver on this set-up of young ballerinas kicking ass with their dance moves, but the movie is short enough that those 15-20 minutes of well-choreographed violence are actually enough. Thurman is appropriately menacing and has just enough backstory to make the character interesting.

Pretty Lethal is one of the movies that does exactly what it says on the box, no more, no less, and that's OK! If a bunch of ballerinas putting razor blades on their shoes to slit bad guys' throats sounds like your idea of a good time, it provides this in spades.

What other critics are saying: Reviews are pretty mixed. The Guardian's Benjamin Lee gets it, writing, "Nothing here is to be taken very seriously at all, but it is mostly devoid of the suffocating, and often nihilistic, smugness one has come to expect from modern action films." Angie Han at the Hollywood Reporter was less amused, writing, "The impression Pretty Lethal leaves behind is one of unfulfilled potential, an exciting premise executed as a fitfully fun but mostly forgettable distraction."

How to watch: Pretty Lethal is now streaming on Prime Video.

Watch on Prime Video

My recommendation: Primate

Why you should watch it: Primate is the best version of itself possible, thanks to killer direction from Johannes Roberts, a lean and mean sub-90-minute runtime and a love for both practical effects and nasty gore on display. It's a low-concept, exploitation-style creature feature that exists purely as a showcase for savvy filmmaking and the effectiveness of a good old-fashioned guy in a monkey suit utilized alongside animatronics and other non-CGI means.

Home from college, Lucy reunites with her family, including pet chimp Ben. Ben contracts rabies during a pool party and turns aggressive. Lucy and her friends barricade themselves in a pool, devising ways to survive the vicious chimp.

It's Cujo with a monkey, and is essentially just a series of extremely tense set pieces strung together as a kick-ass '80s synth score blares and a once-friendly-but-now-diseased pet monkey kills a bunch of people in an isolated setting. It's relentless, brutal and mean, but not without plenty of laughs along the way, both at the audacity of the film's kills and the situations poor Ben finds himself in. There's a particularly well-done sequence in the third act involving Oscar-winning deaf actor Troy Kotsur, as all sound drops from the film, and we experience the terror as he would.

Primate is efficient and wastes no time delivering the goods. It's an A+ take on a decidedly B movie, and horror fans are in for a treat.

What other critics are saying: The critics love Ben, but there are some dissenters. Benjamin Lee at the Guardian is a fan, writing, "Roberts ... is mostly at his savviest and most ruthlessly efficient here, a confident leveling up for a genre filmmaker finding his sweet spot." IndieWire's Alison Foreman disagrees, though. "Unnatural to the point of feeling emotionally alien, the script feels like a first draft made at full force," she writes, but she calls it "fine enough," ultimately.

How to watch: Primate is now streaming on Paramount+.

Watch on Paramount+

But that's not all ...

• Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice: Vince Vaughn pulls double duty in this mostly insufferable sci-fi action comedy about a hitman traveling back in time to stop himself from ratting out his hitman buddy to prevent him from getting killed. Hitman 1 (Vaughn) is married to Eiza Gonzalez, and Hitman 2 (Marsden) is having an affair with her, by the way. The concept is compelling on paper — using a time machine to fix a big mistake you've since come to regret is a smart way into a story, especially on this small a scale — but the execution is equal parts faux-Tarantino and wannabe-Shane Black. The script, from writer/director BenDavid Gabinski, is full of annoying banter and eyeroll-worthy digressions, like when Vaughn has to explain to Marsden what chloroform is, or when a character rhetorically asks, "Does Pooh Bear like honey?" and another replies, "Who the f*** is Pooh Bear?" There's a lot of bickering about the believability of the sci-fi scenario these people have found themselves in, and a bunch of goons with names like "Dumbass Tony," who is, you guessed it, a dumbass. It's all self-satisfied stuff that felt tired when every other movie in the '90s tried and largely failed to emulate the inimitable Tarantino and Black. Don't even get me started on the strange choices made on a craft level, like the seemingly random deployment of the Wong Kar-wai effect, an attempt to pay homage to Hong Kong action flicks that doesn't land as intended. Now streaming on Hulu.

• Anaconda: This crowd-pleasing, self-aware meta-reboot of Anaconda, the 1997 film that became a cable TV classic, is more a satire of the idea of a reboot than an earnest one. Four childhood friends (Jack Black, Paul Rudd, Thandiwe Newton and Steve Zahn) seeking to recapture their youth travel to the Amazon to film an amateur remake of the original Anaconda. Their project unravels when a real giant anaconda emerges, turning the lighthearted shoot into a perilous fight for survival. I found it unexpectedly charming and just silly enough to recommend. Now streaming on Netflix.

That's all for this week — we'll see you next week at the movies!

Looking for more recs? Find your next watch on the Yahoo 100, our daily list of the most popular movies of the year.