Fatal femmes rule in 'Ready or Not' and 'Pretty Lethal'
Ready or Not 2: Here I Come is in theaters as of this writing, and Sarah Michelle Gellar is in it after years of limited acting output from the erstwhile slayer. I might need to see it to support the actress, especially given the official cancellation of the Chloé Zhao-helmed New Sunnydale reboot. I even watched that werewolf show she was on. But I hadn’t seen the original 2019 Ready or Not, so I had to brush up first. On a whim, I followed that with Prime Video’s new ballerina escape thriller Pretty Lethal, and came away with two pretty concise examples of the brand of pop feminism that Buffy the Vampire Slayer helped popularize: the damsels are still in distress, but they can rescue themselves. That doesn’t cure misogyny by any means, but I’ve always been a sucker for competent women.
The competent woman in Ready or Not is Grace (Samara Weaving), who is marrying into the wealthy Le Domas family and worried she won’t fit in. Her fiancé, Alex (Mark O'Brien), is returning to the family estate after a period of estrangement, and he looks and sounds like the kind of “nice guy” you’d have to watch out for in Promising Young Woman. The rest of his relatives include his mother Becky (Andie MacDowell), father Tony (Henry Czerny, who has cornered the market on playing rich assholes), brother Daniel (Adam Brody, who you really did have to watch out for in Promising Young Woman), and scary Aunt Helene (Nicky Guadagni). But the family didn’t come by their wealth legitimately (who does these days?). They’re devil worshipers who must play a ritual game whenever welcoming a new member to the family. Grace draws the “Hide and Seek” card, which means the family must hunt and kill her before dawn the next morning.
The rest of the film is a chase, a race against time, and an eat-the-rich satire in the tradition of The Menu, Knives Out and Glass Onion, and Saltburn. Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, working from a script by Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy, infuse comedy into the horror action, achieving a successful balance of the two. Gillett also has a background in cinematography, so it’s fitting that the film is as handsomely photographed as it is by Brett Jutkiewicz. Bettinellli-Olpin and Gillett also helmed the fifth and sixth installments of the Scream franchise, but this is the superior effort. It contains a wit and vitality that have slowly been seeping out of the Ghostface mysteries.
It also boasts a stellar ensemble that caused me to reflect on how crucial performers are in the bloody genre. Actors in horror are easy to take for granted since the genre is its own star and filmmakers tend to get most of the credit. But that has been changing, especially in light of the two horror performances that won Oscars this year: Michael B. Jordan in Sinners and Amy Madigan in Weapons. Here, the film would collapse without a cast that understands — and can execute — the assignment. Weaving goes for broke without going over the top, which would be tough to do anyway given that what the character is responding to is repeated attempted murder by in-laws. Busick and Murphy gratefully avoid making Grace stupid to keep the story intact. She makes decisions a reasonable viewer might make, and she’s not thwarted by frustrating plot contrivances. It’s outlandish, but plays fair.
So does Pretty Lethal, the slightly lesser of the two films, but equally straightforward in its setup. An American ballet troupe is invited to a competition in Budapest, Hungary. Their bus breaks down on the road, so they seek shelter from the rain at the mysterious Teremok Inn (because if they waited patiently on the bus for repairs to be done there wouldn't be a movie). The inn is run by a former prima ballerina, Devora Kasimer (Uma Thurman, having fun), and it seems to be patronized exclusively by criminals. The production design is by Zsuzsa Kismarty-Lechner (previously an art director on lady actioners Red Sparrow and Atomic Blonde) and co-designer Charlotte Pearson, and they decorate the hell out of this gaudy den of iniquity, which conveys a rundown extravagance that matches Devora, who lost a leg in the prime of her career for reasons that become important to the plot.
Things turn dangerous when the ballerinas’ instructor Thorna Davenport (Lydia Leonard) rejects the advances of gangster Pasha Marcovic (Tamás Szabó Sipos), whose daddy is a powerful crime lord. Pasha shoots her to death in a grisly moment that feels out of place in an otherwise tongue-in-cheek romp. I suppose it’s not “fridging,” per se, since her death is used to motivate her fellow female characters instead of a male protagonist, but it still made me uneasy watching a woman’s brutal execution casually used to advance the plot.
Of course, the ballerinas have now seen too much and must be eliminated. Also of course, they’re dressed in their performance attire after changing out of their wet clothes, which guarantees fight sequences in tutus and pointe shoes. Those fights are well shot by director Vicky Jewson and cinematographer Bridger Nielson and cohesively edited by Richard Smither. The fight choreography blends violence with dance, naturally, as the young women use their training and conditioning to kick ass and take names. But this works as more than just a gimmick. A little like Black Swan before it, Pretty Lethal uses genre conventions to highlight the toll ballet takes on the body. These dancers are fish out of water trying to battle their way through Eastern European baddies, but they’re also strangely in their element dealing with pain. One torture scene, for instance, doesn’t go exactly how the torturer expects.
The characters and relationships are pretty standard. Bones (Maddie Ziegler) had a hardscrabble upbringing and clashes with the aptly named Princess (Lana Condor), who will inevitably put aside her selfishness and learn to work cooperatively with her teammates. There is an interesting subplot where the deaf Chloe (Millicent Simmonds) flirts with one of the slightly less nefarious denizens of the deadly inn, but we don’t get to know her, Grace (Avantika), or Zoe (Iris Apatow) as well as the two leading ladies. A missed opportunity: incorporating Chloe’s deafness more might have added extra dimension to the combat.
Still, Ziegler is a strong action hero. The 23-year-old performer is a dancer by training, having risen to fame on Dance Moms and in Sia’s music videos for “Chandelier” and “Elastic Heart.” She shows the grit and commitment required to play a character credibly named Bones. Hungarian crime hotels may be unforgiving, but so is dance. Ready or not, here they come.