★★★★ out of ★★★★★
Intensity 🩸🩸🩸1/2 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Directed by Vicky Jewson
Virtuosos get violent in Pretty Lethal as a troupe of American ballerinas find themselves in a dangerous situation facing Hungarian mobsters. This fun feature delivers genre thrills at an allegro pace.
Official synopsis
An action-packed thriller where five ballerinas, on their way to a prestigious dance competition, are barely on speaking terms when their bus breaks down in a remote forest. With no other options, they reluctantly seek shelter at an unsettling roadside inn run by Devora Kasimer (Uma Thurman), a reclusive former ballet prodigy. From the moment they arrive, something feels wrong — and their worst instincts prove right. As the situation turns deadly, the fractured team must set aside rivalries and weaponize years of brutal training, turning grace, discipline, and even pointe shoes into tools for survival.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Prime Video
© Amazon Content Services LLC
Review
Director Vicky Jewson’s Pretty Lethal (U.S./U.K, 2026) is absurd, ludicrous, and over the top — and I loved every minute of its madness. It’s an action horror/thriller feature that also boasts a good deal of comical touches, and it is sheer entertainment that genre film devotees of all stripes should get a huge kick out of.
If you’re looking for plot originality, you will find the film somewhat short in that department. Basically, you have the familiar trope of a group of travelers — in this case, a troupe of young American ballerinas with their British leader (Lydia Leonard as Miss Thorna) — stranded in a foreign land and surrounded by baddies. What Jewson, working from a solid screenplay by Kate Freund, and her cast and crew do to set the film apart from the usual fare of that type is embrace the insanity level to a high degree.
Strong Points
Pretty Lethal takes expected tropes and says “Hold my slipper” as it plays with them. For example, viewers learn early on that Bones (Maddie Ziegler in a strong performance) is not one of the rich girls who make up the majority of the troupe. She comes from a tougher background. We might expect, then, that she has some secret violent back story that will be revealed in a surprising way. Not wanting to get too far into spoiler territory, I’ll simply say that is not the case, and she and the rest of the ballerinas must overcome fear to fight back against mysterious innkeeper Devora Kasimer (Uma Thurman in a wickedly marvelous performance) and the criminals who inhabit her establishment. They are more interested in escaping the hotel than kicking butt, but they will do what they need to in order to try and survive.
Alfred Hitchcock famously said, “In films murders are always very clean. I show how difficult it is and what a messy thing it is to kill a man.” Jewson and company adopt that philosophy as these girls are not previously prone to the violence they need to inflict, so the kill set pieces tend to last longer than the average horror slay. The amount of the red stuff is copious, and the splatter that coats the dancers’ tutus is just part of the grue on display.
Cast and Crew
With Ziegler and Thurman leading the way, high praise also goes to the other members of the troupe: Lana Condor as spoiled, rude diva Princess; Millicent Simmonds (A Quiet Place) as hearing impaired dancer Chloe and Iris Apatow as her protective older sister Zoe; and Avantika (Tarot) as religious member Grace. All of the young actors playing the American ballerinas nail every emotional and physical task asked of them, and also show spot-on comic timing.
Jewson helms Pretty Lethal with aplomb, balancing the thrills, kills, and humor wonderfully. Lead Choreographer Will Tuckett and Fight Coordinator Teddy Masson do amazing work, as both the dance sequences and the fight set pieces looks fantastic — and sometimes the two are used in tandem! Director of Photography Bridger Nielson captures the proceedings splendidly.
Conclusion
Pretty Lethal is calculated to be a crowd pleaser, and it delivers the goods. Watching it may be the most fun I have had recently with a film. I highly recommend it to fear-fare devotees looking to have a great time.
Pretty Lethal had its world premiere at SXSW’s 2026 edition, which runs March 12–18 in Austin, Texas, and will stream globally on Prime Video from March 25, 2026.
Review by Joseph Perry
Images courtesy Prime Video
