The erotic thriller, as a cinematic form, promises a specific kind of transaction: we trade our comfort for a peek into the abyss where desire meets destruction. It’s a genre that thrived in an era of different anxieties, built on the high-stakes consequences of bad decisions.
Pretty Thing, the latest entry into this fraught territory, presents itself with all the requisite sleekness of a modern noir, but feels born of a different, more emotionally detached age. We meet Sophie (Alicia Silverstone), a high-powered marketing executive, and Elliot (Karl Glusman), a handsome cater waiter.
Their immediate, potent attraction ignites a brief affair. But this film is less about the consuming fire of its predecessors and more about what happens when the embers cool, leaving behind a stale smoke of obsession that chokes the air with a very contemporary, and surprisingly tepid, form of dread.
The Asymmetrical Arrangement
The film opens on familiar ground, then neatly inverts the topography. Sophie is the predator, though a thoroughly civilized and corporate one. She is a creature of the C-suite, a woman whose life is a fortress of professional success and curated independence.
She embodies a certain strain of modern female power that sees personal relationships as just another area to be optimized. Her sexual appetite is an asset she manages with ruthless efficiency. Elliot, by contrast, is a sketch, a study in arrested development. At 33, he still orbits his doting, psychologically invasive mother, a dynamic that has rendered him a permanent adolescent.
His life is a collection of low-level gigs and unformed aspirations. He is less a person and more a projection of youthful vulnerability, a handsome vessel for Sophie’s passing desires, chosen perhaps for his very lack of definition.
Their initial encounter crackles with this power imbalance. He is the help; she is the guest. The subsequent whirlwind trip to Paris, initiated by her on a whim, is the film’s most potent fantasy. For Elliot, it is a life-altering event, a glimpse into a world of casual luxury that confirms his romantic delusions. For Sophie, it is Tuesday, a business expense.
The film adeptly captures this disparity, framing their affair not as a meeting of equals but as an acquisition. She is not seducing a man; she is indulging in an experience, and he is the primary amenity, easily acquired and, in her mind, just as easily disposable.
The Currency of an Affair
The narrative’s most interesting maneuver is its deliberate partitioning of perspective, creating a chasm of intent between the two leads. We begin firmly in Elliot’s world, a place of earnest, almost painful romanticism. He mistakes their intense physicality for an emotional bond, a fundamental misreading of the terms and conditions in an age of increasingly transactional connections.
The affair’s currency, he believes, is love. The disastrous date he plans upon their return to New York—an off-off-Broadway play and a grimy bar—is not just a bad night out; it is a catastrophic collision of socioeconomic realities. Her revulsion is palpable, the moment his fairytale shatters against the unyielding wall of her world, a world where time is billable and experiences are vetted for quality.
Then, the film offers Sophie’s vantage point, and the cold logic of her actions becomes clear. Her life is a high-pressure container of corporate battles and familial duties. The affair was never a nascent relationship; it was a release valve, a carefully controlled burn within a life that is otherwise all sharp edges and calculated risks.
His refusal to let go is not seen by her as the desperate plea of a lover, but as a breach of an unspoken contract, a glitch in the system. His persistence is a logistical problem, a fly in the chardonnay. This isn’t a story of star-crossed lovers; it’s the story of a failed gig-economy transaction, where one party forgot the work was temporary and developed feelings for the algorithm.
The Peril of Mild Inconvenience
A thriller must, by definition, thrill. It requires a palpable sense of danger, a feeling that the floor could drop out at any moment. Pretty Thing studiously avoids this, opting instead for a new subgenre one might call “nuisance-noir.”
Elliot’s campaign of obsession is less a descent into madness and more a series of profound social irritations, a cinematic reflection of being pestered online. He lurks, he sends too many texts, he shows up uninvited.
He is not a wolf at the door, but a persistent moth bumping against the windowpane, a constant, low-grade hum of annoyance. The film denies us any real stakes. Sophie’s meticulously built life is never in genuine jeopardy; she faces not ruin, but awkwardness. The conflict remains on a low simmer, refusing to boil.
This lack of peril is most glaring in the script’s fumbled attempt at psychological complexity. There is a faint suggestion that as Sophie’s rejections become more physical, Elliot discovers a nascent masochism, misreading her violence as a form of intense engagement.
This could have been a fascinating, thorny path to explore—a truly unsettling commentary on confused consent and desire. Instead, it is a dangling thread, a whisper of a much darker, more interesting film that Pretty Thing is too timid to become. The result is a conflict without consequence, a sanitized danger that feels oddly, disappointingly safe.
A Beautifully Furnished Void
Visually, the film is impeccable. Matthew Klammer’s cinematography wraps the characters in a world of honeyed light and elegant shadows, a style that promises depth and sophistication. Yet the polish only serves to highlight the hollowness at its center.
Both Silverstone and Glusman are committed, doing what they can to inflate characters who are fundamentally concepts. Silverstone, in a full-circle moment from her teen-temptress role in The Crush, carries Sophie’s authority well, but seems trapped behind the character’s icy facade.
Glusman gives Elliot a believable wounded-puppy quality, but the script gives him no room to be anything more. The supporting players, especially a fiery Tammy Blanchard in a fleeting scene as Sophie’s sister, offer a jolt of authentic life that only underscores how little of it exists elsewhere.
This leads to the film’s misguided ending, which arrives not with a bang or even a whimper, but with an indifferent shrug. It’s an abrupt cessation of events that feels less like a deliberate artistic choice and more like the filmmakers simply ran out of ideas.
The conclusion doesn’t resolve the film’s questions; it exposes the fact that it never truly intended to ask them. What remains is the memory of a stylish exercise, a story about obsession that lacks a compelling obsession of its own. It is a perfectly decorated room with nothing inside.
Pretty Thing is a 96-minute erotic thriller that premiered in select U.S. theaters and on VOD on July 4, 2025, distributed by Shout! Studios. It’s now available to stream digitally and through rental platforms.
Full Credits
Director: Justin Kelly
Writers: Jack Donnelly
Producers and Executive Producers: Jordan Beckerman, Jesse Korman, Scott Levenson, Jordan Yale Levine, Lexi Tannenholtz; Executive Producers: Eric Broughton, Nicholas Donnermeyer, Kurt Fethke, Dajana Gudic, Will Hirschfeld, Jason Kringstein, Gigi Lacks
Cast: Alicia Silverstone, Karl Glusman, Catherine Curtin, Tammy Blanchard, Britne Oldford, Esteban Benito, Sorika Wolf, John Wollman, Mike Rob, Paul McCallion, Nicole Annunziata
Director of Photography (Cinematographer): Matt Klammer
Editors: Justin Kelly
Composer: Tim Kvasnosky
The Review
Pretty Thing
Pretty Thing presents a sleek, modern shell of an erotic thriller but forgets to include the vital machinery of suspense and psychological depth. While Silverstone and Glusman give committed performances and the cinematography offers a polished sheen, the film is hobbled by a timid script that shies away from genuine danger. It poses interesting questions about power dynamics and modern desire but provides no satisfying answers, culminating in an abrupt ending that leaves it feeling like a beautifully shot, unfinished thought.
PROS
- Visually stylish with polished cinematography.
- Strong, committed performances from Alicia Silverstone and Karl Glusman.
- An interesting premise that inverts traditional genre power dynamics.
CONS
- A complete lack of suspense or tension.
- The script is underdeveloped, leaving characters feeling like concepts.
- The ending is abrupt and deeply unsatisfying.
- Fails to explore its own intriguing psychological ideas.
