Christine N Rifkin – Author

Recently, I’ve taken up a new hobby: dance. I’ve been taking tap and ballet for the last few months and needless to say, it has taken over my life. I’ve been taking in so much dance content in the last few months and I have been looking for movies that mix my two favorite things right now: dance and horror. Of course, there is the classic, The Red Shoes, and of course, the legendary Black Swan, but in recent years, I’ve been looking for someting more gory.

That’s why it was so serendipitious that a new horror movie, Pretty Lethal, had come to Prime Video to stream. I was very intrigued. Not simply because of the premise (mixing dance and horror/gore? count me in!) but the cast is also stacked. Uma Thurman, Maddie Ziegler, Iris Apatow, Lana Condor, and Millicent Simmonds were all names I recognized. I really wanted to see them all dance! I went into the film completely blind to the plot and any potential violence that would be in it so that I would have a pure reaction when I saw it.

The film is about a ballet troupe that travels to Budapest with their teacher to attend a prestigious international dance competition. They get stranded and a local man invites them to an inn run by Devora Kasimer (Uma Thurman). Devora is a former ballerina and now heads a small crime family. She welcomes the girls and their teacher into the inn to dry off after being caught in a rainstorm, but they quickly learn how dangerous Devora is. The girls have to fight (read: dance) their way out of the inn to make it to the competition, leaving a trail of dead criminals behind.

Why did the girls have to change into tights and tutus for the rest of the film? Not sure, but I was able to look past it because it paid off in the end. The girls weaponized their pointe shoes, danced the Nutcracker, and knocked off alot of men. If that isn’t girl power, I don’t know what is. The amount of blood and gore was just enough to not be cartoonish and the way they fought some of these guys was just wonderfully ridiculous. I could have watched them do dance fight scenes for hours.

There was a plot, I’m pretty sure, but that wasn’t why I decided to watch this movie. It was about the action. If you’re the type that likes your horror to have morals and lessons at the end, there isn’t really one here. I don’t necessarily feel that it makes this movie any less entertaining. I just think that the filmmakers were focused more on the aesthetic of this idea. It’s why it was vital that the only clothes they had to change into were tutus and pointe shoes. Trust me. No one wants to walk around in pointe shoes all day if they’re trying to be comfortable, just ask a ballerina. But I know that this wasn’t intended to be an accurate representation of ballet either, this was just meant to be a fun time for everybody!

New dance aspiration: get fitted for pointe shoes so I can make a toe-blade.

Also, the fact that this film was directed by a woman and features so many talented women makes me love it even more. We need more horror like this.

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

See my Letterboxd Review here: https://boxd.it/dGPfSB