Justin Kelly’s erotic thriller, “Pretty Thing” (2025), strains credibility at every count and lacks the heat that fuels films of this kind. There’s sex, violence, darkness creeping in, and obsession escalating to terrifying extremes. This should have been a slick thriller, but Kelly, working from Jack Donnelly’s bland, purposeless screenplay, struggles to maintain even a modicum of suspense. Instead, the heavy-lifting is left to Tim Kvasnosky’s music to crank up the unsettling mood.
It’s too empty a project to elicit any real thrills or unease. There are no specific dimensions to the two characters, rendering their revulsions and horror only stock thin. Even a switch in perspective doesn’t land because the two parts don’t cohere well together. There’s an impulse here to just rely on the oscillating moods and vagaries, and tease out their windfall. Men not being able to handle rejection by women feeds the slow, boiling dread in the film. A refusal to take the cue and quit drives the narrative. The woman insists she’s no longer interested, but the man keeps badgering, stating his absolute commitment and love for her that can surpass everything.
Pretty Thing (2025) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:
The film takes this kernel of an idea and juices it out to maximise the horror and disgust women have to endure at the hands of a man-child, should they unfortunately cross paths with one. This is what comes the way of Sophie in the film. But it’s not her perspective that opens the film.
We begin with Elliot (Karl Glusman), who works at the reception of a fancy hotel. His life and service are dull. There are no sparks, no relationships. At home, he lives with his ill mother, who demands care and attention and berates him when he’s away for too long. When he stumbles across the much older Sophie (Alicia Silverstone), she holds him in thrall. He’s instantly besotted with her. She wields seduction and confidence, leaving him erotically captivated. He comes under her full sway. She will lay out the rules of engagement. She strikes him as fully imperious and determined about her position. They instantly take off on a heated affair. The next morning, she goes away without much fuss. But he cannot stop thinking about her.
When he receives an offer from her to join her on a Paris trip, he can’t contain himself. It’s his dreams coming true. In Paris, he rambles through, wandering on his own, while she also engages in her work pursuit. She has a couple of business meetings. It’s on a date night in Paris, and she introduces herself as having a high-end marketing job. She states she’s not married. The implication is she isn’t looking for something serious in the relationship, but he’s too enamoured. They have a wonderful, adventurous time in Paris. She treats him to all the pleasures he wouldn’t be able to afford. It only makes him think she, too, likes him a lot.
Things, however, change dramatically once the trip ends and they return. He cannot stop thinking of her. She gives all the cues that she’s no longer interested in him. But he stays adamant. On a double date, she seeks to go away. He is displeased and frustrated. Elliot asks her if he did anything wrong. He pleads that she give him another shot. But she’s clear and emphatic about her lack of interest in him. She saw whatever happened with him as a one-off fling, nothing to be taken with a lasting seriousness. It’s not a proper relationship; she sees it as just a casual affair.
Gradually, we also discover that she has a fixation on younger men. She has several casual flings. Sophie has no qualms about it. She had no doubts about the affair being a non-demanding business. He stays insistent, prodding. Elliot won’t leave her so easily. He hangs on, desperate that she’ll come back to him. He tails her everywhere and demonstrates how far he’s ready to go for her. Moreover, Elliot follows her to work and home. He turns all the more distraught and enraged when he spots her with a man. He suspects she is hooking up with someone else now. Soon, he sees himself as jilted in love, even though the situation isn’t like that at all.
The film switches to her perspective and shows her amplified dread. He drops notes and cues at her apartment and office. We also see her training as a boxer. Her mounting terror runs in tandem with the need to lash out and go fully aggressive. However, where’s the tension, the flare of things going south? The film tries to combine peril and fraught energy, but it also cannot stave off an inherent prissiness, a stiffness of pose. It’s too busy being austere to be properly messy and frightening and unwieldy. As a result, the threat barely registers. The film darts from one situation to another without a spike in momentum. It is too stale and muted to provoke any accentuation or added drama.
Pretty Thing (2025) Movie Ending Explained:
Does Elliot quit stalking Sophie?
What she does is seek out his connections, who tell her they didn’t know he could be a stalker. She explains that what he might have seen as a special gesture means nothing to her. Sophie goes to Paris regularly, to visit his mother — a signal to him that he shouldn’t mess with her. She reminds him that she, too, can hold power in this horrible, twisted game.
The situation exacerbates when he drops intimate pictures of her outside her office. To prevent a scandal, she’s suggested at work that she no longer preside over a meeting. Shaken, she has had enough of it. She lands at his house in a stormy fit and beats him up mercilessly, drawing blood. Satisfied with her vengeance, she goes away. The last frame of her suggests complacency and no worries. But the ending emphasises he’s still alive. He hasn’t been threatened at all. Rather, he gets gusto from her attack. It’s a sadistic burst that will drive him further.
