A very fun new action movie is available to watch now

This starry new film has the makings of a cult classic.

The movie stars Zazie Beetz (Full Circle) as a woman with a dark past. She shows up one night at The Virgil, an exclusive and mysterious high-rise apartment block in New York.

She tells the building's Irish superintendent (Oscar-winner Patricia Arquette, Severance) that she has arrived to take up a job post as a maid. In reality, however, she is on the hunt for her estranged little sister (Myha'la, Industry), who similarly answered a help-wanted ad to be a housekeeper at The Virgil.

Very quickly into spending a night in the building's servant lodgings, our hero discovers that the residents of the apartment block are actually a Satanic cult. Even worse, she is intended to be their latest sacrifice.

As such, our hero must fight dozens and dozens of The Virgil's occupants while searching for her sibling.

Coming out in the immediate aftermath of a slew of blackly comic and bloody "eat-the-rich" movies - No Other Choice, How to Make a Killing, Ready or Not 2: Here I Come - They Will Kill You's tale of a maid being targeted by her wealthy, Satanist employers can't help but feel warmed over.

The movie particularly suffers from hitting cinemas just a week after Ready or Not 2, which also sees rich Satanists on the hunt for a sacrifice and similarly blends action, comedy and horror.

All that being said, They Will Kill You's stellar execution of these already well-trodden story beats and themes suggests it might stand the test of time above many other recent darkly comic, violent genre flicks about class warfare.

The movie is the English-language debut of Russian director Kirill Sokolov, whose 2018 comedy-thriller Why Don't You Just Die! earned rave reviews. And there is a devilish sense of fun and an infectious energy to They Will Kill You, almost like you can feel the filmmaker behind the camera, Sam Raimi-style, delighting at getting to pull off his brand of insanity on a Hollywood budget and with a very established cast.

The movie begins like a great haunted hotel story, with its troubled protagonist arriving on a rainy night at The Virgil. Beautiful gloomy shots of its colourful, but dimly lit, long corridors, combined with rumbling sounds in the vents, quickly suggest that all is not right.

Honestly, this could have been the whole film, and we would have been happy. Alas, Zazie Beetz's samurai-loving protagonist comes to the same conclusion as the audience fairly quickly. Early on, she dispatches several antagonists that invade her room with a katana, the first of numerous incredibly choreographed, balletic but hard-hitting action set-pieces.

In the moment, you might feel that Sokolov and his co-writer Alex Litvak have played their hand too early. But the movie still has a couple of surprises up its sleeve.

We don't want to spoil, so all we'll say is that They Will Kill You really puts its hero through the wringer. This is as she is stalked through The Virgil's corridors, vents and lift shafts by dozens of killers, human and supernatural.

Eventually, she faces a big bad who's been portrayed in cinemas many times before, but never quite as inventively as this.

The cast is excellent. Beetz manages to be easy to root for, without sacrificing any of her character's badass strength, borne from a tough life. Arquette, doing an interesting Irish accent, finds fun and nuance as one of the more senior antagonists.

Heather Graham (Boogie Nights) and Tom Felton (Harry Potter) don't get much character development as villainous underlings. But they do bring charisma and humour, hamming it up on the sidelines.

In fact, They Will Kill You makes for a better sequel to 2019's excellent Ready or Not than last week's Ready or Not 2. We'd be surprised if this doesn't garner a cult following.

They Will Kill You is in cinemas now.