Pretty Lethal review (2026)
Pretty Lethal arrives at a fortuitous time when audiences are more willing than ever to buy into ballerinas as bada$$ action heroines.
That’s why director Vicky Jewson and screenwriter Kate Freund’s decision to make Pretty Lethal an action comedy with some fairly gruesome violent sequences especially confusing.
Comedy typically doesn’t work in a film where characters get impaled, have their eyes gouged out with forks, throats are slashed with blades, and all the bloody action is taken very seriously. Conversely, it’s hard to make a strong action movie with intense and at times gory blood sprays when legitimate attempts to be funny are thrown in the mix.
Pretty Lethal could work as a comedy with some action elements or an action movie with solid comedic banter but it can’t be both especially with the hardcore Ready or Not style bloody action.
A ballerina company of teenagers is making their final preparations to leave Los Angeles and compete in an international competition in Budapest. Troupe leader Thorna Davenport (Lydia Leonard, Last Christmas) has her hands full navigating the various personalities.
Princess (Lana Condor) is the pampered would-be featured dancer whose well-off mother sponsors the group’s trip to an international dance competition.
Her main rival, Bones (Maddie Ziegler), doesn’t come from such a privileged upbringing sparking an intense dislike of the haughty Princess. Zoe (Iris Apatow) is prone to being bossy and overprotective of her hearing-impaired sister, Chloe (Millicent Simmonds, A Quiet Place Part II) while the very religious and appropriately named Grace (Avantika) just wants to help everyone get along.
The crew makes it to Hungary when their bus breaks down. Fearing they’ll get replaced in the competition, they start walking in hopes of finding a way to get another ride. They don’t get too far when a downpour drenches them leaving them desperate for shelter. They stumble onto an inn filled with a bunch of creepy looking, skeevy guys. They seem friendly in that “we’re going to slip something in your food and never let you leave this inn alive” kind of way. The inn is run by the equally icy Devora Kasimer (Uma Thurman, The Old Guard 2), a former ballerina herself.
Devora is partnered up with a ruthless crime boss and has to tolerate his obnoxious son, Pasha Marcovic (Tamás Szabó Sipos), being his typical boorish self. Angered by Thorna rejecting his advances, Pasha shoots her. Rightfully terrified, the girls realize no one is coming to save them and to escape Pasha’s goons and Devora’s crew, they’re going to have to come together as not just a standout dance company, but also fighters willing to do whatever it takes to survive.
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Some of the girls respond faster than others. Bones immediately sizes up the situation and has to rally the others until they snap out of their initial panic and fear. The plot doesn’t ever fully come together and feels like a string of disjointed segments.
While the plot has its share of flaws, Pretty Lethal is watchable enough thanks to the main cast. Condor and Ziegler play off each other well as bickering rivals while Avantika is amusing as the very religious girl who inadvertently took drugs while still maintaining her Bible-quoting mindset.
Devora’s subplot doesn’t add anything but goofiness to the proceeding, which feels like a waste of Thurman’s star power. Some of the scenarios feel contrived in order to get the characters from one place to another when it seems like there are plenty of opportunities for the girls to escape without fighting. Of course, that would make the whole Pretty Lethal premise of killer ballerinas pretty worthless.
To Jewson’s immense credit, she doesn’t make the ballerinas unstoppable whirlwind fighters. They get beaten, punched and stabbed and receive almost as good as they give. That’s important to make the Pretty Lethal fights more meaningful and plays into the fun visual of watching the girls fight using their dancing techniques and routines.
Pretty Lethal has some serious physicality at play. Freund also doesn’t make every dude dumb for the sake of propping up the girls. They guys have been heavily drinking and clearly aren’t at their best. This helps even the odds of these larger, more powerful guys being befuddled by ballerina moves and slower reaction time as they get sliced up and stabbed.
So many screenwriters just roll with a silly idea and ask the audience to go along with it. Five young ballerinas slicing and dicing a constantly respawning horde of dudes at a bar makes a whole lot more sense if they’re drunk. The fight scenes do the heavy lifting to prop up the film’s weaker opening act.
Pretty Lethal misses its ideal mark to wrap up going on for another 20 minutes that isn’t nearly as satisfying. The film is a decent watch, but the clashing tones hold it back from being worthy of a standing ovation.
Rating: 6 out of 10
Photo Credit: Amazon MGM Studios
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