A Los Angeles-based ballet troupe, consisting of principal dancer Bones, bratty socialite Princess, deeply religious Grace, kind-hearted Zoe, and her hearing-impaired sister Chloe, are invited to attend a prestigious international competition in Budapest with their teacher, Thorna Devonport. A series of mix-ups at the airport result in the troupe having to take a run-down bus to the competition; when it breaks down, they leave on foot to find a cab. A local man invites them to enter the Teremok Inn, run by Devora Kasimer, a former prima ballerina and head of a small crime family. At Devora's suggestion, the girls change out of their rain-soaked clothes into their tutus.
While taking Chloe to the ladies' room, Thorna sees Devora torturing a man in her office. She tries to round up the girls so they can leave, but Pasha Marcovic, Devora's criminal associate, impulsively shoots her in the head after she knees him for making drunken advances. When Princess threatens to call the police, Devora has the girls locked in the inn's basement and burns their passports and cellphones. Bones tries to flee but gets knocked out and dragged downstairs, all the while, Chloe, unaware of the situation, begins hooking up with Devora's youngest son, Artyom.
Angered by Pasha's actions, Devora refuses to pay protection until she meets his father, gangster Lothar "The Butcher" Marcovic, and hires a cleaner, Doktor, to dispose of the girls' corpses after she kills them. Bones awakens to find Grace drugged up and escapes her binds. The doorman, Osip, arrives to rape Grace; Bones uses her ingenuity to kill him and rounds up the troupe. Pasha sends his bodyguards to kill the girls in secret. By weaponizing their ballet gear and using dance positions as improvised martial arts, they are able to cut down their attackers. As the girls decide to find Chloe, Princess splits off from the group in a selfish attempt to save herself but returns after seeing Doktor chopping up Thorna's body.
Devora orders her henchmen to find and kill the girls, before forcing Pasha to call his father for help. With Bones leading, all five girls perform The Nutcracker with razors blades stuck in their pointe shoes and taped to their fingertips, resulting in a gruesome hand-to-hand fight that leaves all of the men dead while sparing Artyom. Devora retrieves a stash of C-4 explosives and begins rigging the building to blow. Bones gets the other girls out but is captured by Devora, who shoots Pasha in the leg, revealing that his father was responsible for her prosthetic leg due to her father's inability to pay off a debt, thus ruining her ballet career. As Lothar closes in on Teremok, Devora dons her Sugar Plum Fairy tutu while Princess saves Bones from having her leg amputated by Doktor, and they find Pasha.
As Lothar and his men arrive, Grace, Zoe, and Chloe return back inside to find Bones and Princess, discovering the inn rigged to blow. As the five ballerinas are reunited, Devora appears with a remote trigger for the C-4. Sympathetic to Devora's tragedy, Bones pleads with her to spare them, dancer to dancer. Devora takes Pasha as a hostage and allows the girls to flee while Lothar and his men storm the hotel. Seeking revenge, Devora reveals to Lothar who she really is before setting off the explosives, killing her, Lothar, Pasha, and Marcovic's men in the process, just as the girls escape in the nick of time. The troupe commandeer some of Lothar's motorcycles and ride off, passing the broken-down bus and arriving in Budapest. They reach the theatre where they perform their repertoire as a team in Thorna's memory.
Production was delayed to August 2024, commencing in Budapest, with Headey, Shahidi and Merced having exited the film. Maddie Ziegler, Avantika and Uma Thurman were added to the cast in their place.[3][4] Filming concluded in October.[5]
In November 2024, it was revealed that international sales agent The Veterans had sold all international distribution rights to Amazon MGM Studios.[7] In September 2025, Amazon MGM was reported to be nearing a deal for U.S. distribution rights for $11-12 million, giving them worldwide rights to the film.[8]
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 57% of 72 critics' reviews are positive.The website's consensus reads: "Starting off with a fun hook and diluting it with a plethora of clichés, Pretty Lethal doesn't reach its full operatic potential but doles out enough balletic action to remain reasonably en pointe."[10]
