Pretty Lethal (2026)

The premise is efficient. A Los Angeles ballet troupe, en route to a competition in Budapest, has its bus expire in the Hungarian countryside and takes shelter at a performance-art themed inn run by a former prima ballerina who now heads a modest crime family. When the teacher is shot and the passports are burned, the dancers improvise. Pointe shoes acquire razorblades. Arabesques become joint locks. A great deal of blood ends up on the tulle, which the film regards as a costume decision and not a tragedy.

The empowerment architecture is unmistakable and, to its credit, largely unspoken. A female director and a female writer preside over an all-female ensemble that slaughters a gang of predatory men, and the tragic antagonist is a wronged ballerina whose career was ruined by a debt she inherited. The film does not stop to explain any of this. It lets the choreography do the arguing, which is the least tedious way to make a point. There is a plea delivered dancer to dancer, and a prosthetic leg that functions as a quiet thesis statement about who gets to dance and who pays for it.

The casting is conspicuously diverse, headlined by Lana Condor, Avantika, and Maddie Ziegler, with Millicent Simmonds playing a hearing-impaired character. These choices register as deliberate and are never burdened with dialogue about themselves, which is a relief. The multiracial ensemble engages no racial themes. The ballet aesthetic engages no body-positivity themes. The crime family engages no systemic critique of wealth, being merely gangsters with a protection racket. What remains is a genre exercise with a hook, executed with competence, and content to be exactly that. The tutus are blood-stained. The reviews are mixed. The classification is complete.

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