Pretty Lethal: Action With A Killer Pointe | SXSW 2026

Full disclosure: I'm rating this one on a curve. Being a connoisseur of shitty action movies helps you develop a sort of…sixth sense about what is worth your time and what isn't, the diamond tiaras from the cubic zirconias. And Pretty Lethal, which I've been following since it was known as Ballerina Overdrive, is: Vicky Jewson skipping the preamble with a strike straight at the jugular, an en pointe killing machine that's slight but makes zero pretensions about its premise.

Bones (Maddie Ziegler), Princess (Lana Condor), Grace (Avantika), Chloe (Millicent Simmonds), and Zoe (Iris Apatow) are a ballet troupe about to perform at a prestigious dance competition in Budapest, but they can barely pirouette without punching each other in the nose. Amidst their squabbling, the girls are forced to hunker down at a mysterious inn when their bus breaks down on the road, where an impulsive act of violence finds them fighting to survive the night against the armed forces of an imperious former ballerina (Uma Thurman). Call it Center Stage by way of John Wick, but in a larger sense Pretty Lethal moves like a lovely baton pass from the female creatives, Thurman especially, who've fought for space in a genre that's for so long only seen them as "damsels" or lone wolf "final girls" to the next generation, one that gets to choose sisterhood and embrace femininity as a weapon (toe blades, we love) rather being pigeonholed with masculine signifiers if they wanna indicate power.

The crew does a remarkable job choreographing the action through the discipline of dance. Though it casts trained dancers in Avantika and Maddie Ziegler, each girl was given a ballet double to shadow them, alongside the incredible hours of training, to match the movements seamlessly: every tendu, every jeté, every relevé moves with fierce intent, as gnarly as it is graceful. Of the quintet, Ziegler in particular stands out to me, from Dance Moms to scream queen hopeful; she's got something of Samara Weaving in her, enraged, shrieking, this beast caged inside a prima's elegant frame. Avantika gets the lion's share of comedic beats thanks to a drugged-up subplot, and she handles the woozy, Bible Girl on shrooms role expertly, garnering the biggest laughs of the screening along with Condor's bitchy asides. Simmonds and Apatow don't have much to do except react, support, and attack, and it leaves the two feeling lost in an otherwise excellent ensemble where another pass at the script could have given them more involvement.

It's Thurman, however, who lands the film's most poignant arc, and its most interesting statement on female solidarity in a field where competition is ruthlessly encouraged and the dreams easily dashed; the seasoned action star carries herself like a soft slip of steel, matronly and yet biding her bitterness until she can act on it, and it's this layered tension she shapes between her and the girls she sees herself in that lifts up the film's middling start, shapes its ecstatic middle, and lays the foundation for its conclusion.

Now, do I think Pretty Lethal is especially spectacular? Not really, but I also recognize that it doesn't need to do anything more than what it sets out to. It's a grisly, incredibly solid genre film that lets ballerina girls go apeshit. Sometimes that's enough. Added Uma Thurman doesn't hurt either. Jewson is clever and competent, and stacks her film with creative kills and a thrilling spin on an art form we take at face value, for granted, that it works. Well worth pressing play on.