Not That Hot: Pretty Movie Review
Every actor in this two-hour horror film is one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever seen, but that’s not why this film is called Pretty. Instead, nineteen-year-old writer-director-cinematographer Metecan Duran named the movie after the main character. Pretty lives in a gigantic white mansion with her sister Emma, who hates her—and maybe I’d hate Pretty too if my parents put us at war like that since naming us. Pretty’s parents have been stuck in Moscow for an undetermined amount of time, and while that detail eventually becomes clear, the audience never does learn where this movie is set. How far away is this mansion from Moscow? Everyone has an accent but speaks exclusively in English, which for me—a typical American who cannot decipher dialects—also made it difficult to discern if the lines were delivered robotically or authentically within context. Likewise, the dialogue itself is a bit awkward, but perhaps that’s only true for me with my own expectations for American and British English, their idioms, and their appropriate conversational pauses.
After all, this movie was an official selection in twelve film festivals across the world, from New York to Rome. There’s clearly merit here. So, let’s start there.
A horror movie has one job, and that’s to generate fear. Pretty unquestionably succeeded on that front. The independent film created atmospheric suspense using reflective surfaces, dark hallways, and lonely streets—and in the moments that Pretty or another character sees something dreadful a full beat before the audience. When the camera panned away from their wide eyes, it forced the viewer to sit with each horrific image: a woman with a painted white face and a yellow smile, a man in a black hoodie and an expressionless mask, a creature with a man’s body and a scraggily bunny head in a black trench coat.
From my safe seat at home, I sat frozen in fear at the sight of these beings. More than once I yelped during a jump scare and felt surprised (and maybe a little hurt) when the people I share my home with did not come running to see if I was alright. The ghost of a dead girl tells Pretty an interesting little fairytale that features a sentient rabbit, a white fur cloak, and a personified star, and these images recur throughout the film, especially in the main character’s clothing: She often wears white but dons a white fur coat in one particular scene, and in another, she wears silver stars in the corners of her eyes. Iclal Aykac as Ivy is an absolute scream queen; her guttural shrieks and her dialogue delivery alike made me believe her. Director Duran also composed the score for the movie, which not only featured tracks that aided in building a sense of dread in key scenes but also ones that I would unironically add to my Liked Songs playlist on Spotify if I could find them. (Their titles are not listed in the credits.)
For a first film—especially one from a current medical student—Pretty is a feat. The beginning had some bumps with incongruous statements like, “It’s almost like they [Pretty’s parents] just left yesterday, or I suppose I just got used to it,” but I saw the film’s promise early in Act I (labeled “I’ve heard your name before” in post) as my back grew rigid with anticipation. But as the film progressed toward Act II: “It comes for the ones who ask,” the movie became more of a mess—in the missed details while filming, in the editing, and in the story itself.
Pretty’s personality is demure and shy, not only around her sister, who says things like, “You need to stop looking at people like they’re going to fix whatever’s wrong with you,” but even her hot airhead neighbor Tom and her two cousins. I might buy that character if Pretty was naturally pretty, if she did the “clean girl” no-makeup makeup that period pieces get away with, back when people definitely did not have access to bronzing kits. But Pretty is fully done up at all times—even while she’s sleeping, even in mourning. Not just a full face of foundation and blush, but also eyebrow pencil, glittery eyeshadow, bold lipstick, and curled hair at full volume.
Every outfit she wears makes her look like a doll, which I suppose is meant to make her appear innocent, but instead, it makes her look chic as hell. Her sister isn’t pressuring her to get done up, so where does this confidence come from?
Some parts of the movie are shown clearly on screen, while other parts are left for the viewer to piece together. If the entire movie was a puzzle to solve, this could work. But when some scenes show someone clearly dying on screen and another one not, it’s like, Wait, what happened? Oh, someone died? How? Did they really die, or is this a dream? And even among the myriad dream sequences, it turns out, no, not this time. This was real, even though it was so dreamlike. You could argue that this uncertainty mirrors Pretty’s state of mind. But also…what exactly is her state of mind? Just sort of doe-eyed and vapid and uncomfortable?
Beyond the story, the overlooked details while filming and editing pulled me away from that yummy sense of dread Duran established in the first third of the film. A ding sounds when Pretty gets a message on Instagram, but when the camera zooms in on her phone, it clearly has notifications silenced according to an icon at the top of the screen. When Pretty types “My name is,” her phone tries to autofill “Melisa Kihtir,” the actress’s name. In one scene, Pretty asks Emma, “What are you holding?” when Emma is clearly holding a phone—in fact, the phone is the closest object to the camera, and from that angle, the audience can tell that Pretty can see with her working human eyes what Emma holds in her hand. In another scene where Pretty waits to meet her secret admirer, a cat passes through a chain-link fence; the camera zooms in on Pretty’s message before the edit takes us back to the street view—at which point the cat is on the other side of the gate again. During a chase scene, Pretty’s thigh-high stilettos are replaced with knee-high heel-less boots, and during the climax, Pretty passes through a doorway, magically changing from a short-sleeve off-the-shoulder white dress to one with long sleeves. Someone who is supposed to be dead is clearly breathing and even flickering his eyes beneath his eyelids. Two days after some important side characters are murdered, Emma and Pretty have erected an ornate Christmas tree in their home.
Pretty showed promise, but it ultimately gave the impression that director Duran was rushing to finish the film during finals.