By: Malasha Parker
Photo By Prime Video
Pretty Lethal isn’t the sharp and on point of a thriller that it wants to be. It’s a movie about five ballerinas trying to make it to a dance competition that turns into a horror film, which can’t quite find its footing on the main stage. Director Vicky Jewson’s narrative film Pretty Lethal is a decent watch, but doesn’t deliver.
Five ballerinas prepare to go compete in a dance competition. The group doesn’t get along well and that is made clear immediately when Bones (Maddie Ziegler) finally arrives and hears rude comments from Princess (Lana Condor) about her tardiness. The girls practice and the next day they head to the competition. While driving their bus breaks down. The five girls and their instructor decide to leave the bus driver to fix it and try to find a place to stay. They come across an inn and a man invites them to stay there. Devora Kasimer (Uma Thurman) runs the inn and Osip (Miklós Béres) is the person that follows her orders. The girls and instructor get comfortable until they learn about some weird things happening. When the instructor overhears and sees someone get killed she tries to leave, but is immediately murdered herself. The ballerinas are witness to this and end up having to fight for their lives to get out of the inn alive. Bonds are tested and made between the girls as they have to work as a group to save their lives.
Pretty Lethal has a star studded Gen Z main cast including Lana Condor, Maddie Ziegler, Avantika, Millicient Simmonds and Iris Apatow. Unfortunately, the amount of amazing rising actresses in the movie cannot help to make this the ballet thriller it sets itself out to be. Ziegler plays Bones who is close to the dance instructor and stands on her own from the group. It becomes more apparent later in the film the way she takes action to escape their captures first, but her poor performance makes it difficult to take the more emotional scenes seriously. The lines come off flat when Bones is up against the people trying to kill her or when she’s in any heightened situation. Ziegler is still an amazing dancer and the use of her skills to fight the kidnappers is one of the great points used in the movie. The cohesiveness between the rest of the cast is great as well. Candor and Avantika shine in Pretty Lethal in their roles as a mean girl and a bubbly girl respectively. They both show growth as characters and fully lean into their roles, which helps to even out some of the more dull or overacted scenes coming from other members of the cast. The ballerinas work best when they’re all together and seem to be on the same level of dancing when performing.
Kate Freund’s writing doesn’t execute the thrill and momentum that it showcases in the trailers. The feature establishes a solid start and then runs off the rails the deeper it gets into the plot of the random inn in the city that the girls and their instructor find. Vicky Jewson directs this film with an underwhelming amount of action scenes. The fun ballet choreography incorporated in the fight sequences gets overshadowed by it not looking realistic enough. The sound effects don’t do any favors for certain scenes, especially the action ones. The soundtrack is also not very complimentary to the film.
Pretty Lethal doesn’t live up to the hype it tried to garner. It has a great premise, but the way the storyline unfolds leaves too much space for plot holes and subpar acting from all around. It’s entertaining enough to watch, but nothing really noteworthy happens that makes audiences want to see it again or recommend it to anyone.