Red Sonja

The Fire in the B-Movie Ashes

There is a specific, melancholy texture to the "passion project" that arrives too late, with too little money, yet refuses to be cynical. MJ Bassett’s *Red Sonja* (2025) is precisely this kind of artifact. Emerging from decades of development hell—passing through the hands of Robert Rodriguez and Bryan Singer before landing with Bassett—this is not the polished, studio-tentpole blockbuster that the Marvel-adjacent source material might suggest. Instead, it is a scrappy, sweaty, and surprisingly earnest piece of pulp cinema that feels like a lost relic from the video store era, for better and for worse.

Bassett, a director who understands the geometry of action (proven in *Solomon Kane*) and the intimacy of survival, attempts to strip the "She-Devil with a Sword" of her purely exploitation roots without losing the genre’s teeth. The result is a film that constantly wars with its own budget, reaching for epic high fantasy while standing on a SyFy channel foundation.



Visually, *Red Sonja* is a study in constraints. The cinematography oscillates between claustrophobic close-ups—likely hiding the edges of limited sets—and moments of genuine painterly ambition. There is a tactile grime to this world; the mud looks like mud, and the blood looks disturbingly viscous. However, the visual effects often betray the film’s modest resources. The digital creatures and expansive backdrops sometimes float with the weightlessness of a screensaver, breaking the immersion that the practical sets work so hard to build.

Yet, Bassett uses this roughness to her advantage. The film doesn’t try to be *Dune*. It leans into the jagged edges of sword-and-sorcery. The gladiator sequences, particularly the much-discussed arena uprising, are staged with a kinetic brutality that prioritizes impact over grace. It’s messy, chaotic fighting, fitting for a character who isn't a trained knight but a survivor fueled by rage.



The film’s pulse, however, beats entirely within Matilda Lutz. Known for her ferocious turn in *Revenge* (2017), Lutz brings a feral, physical intensity that transcends the script’s limitations. She plays Sonja not as a pin-up in chainmail, but as a woman carved out of grief. The "male gaze" controversy that has dogged this character for fifty years is addressed not by ignoring the iconic metal bikini, but by recontextualizing it through Lutz’s performance—she wears it like war paint, an act of defiance rather than submission.

Her antagonist, Emperor Dragan (Robert Sheehan), provides a fascinating counterweight. Sheehan plays him not as a brooding warlord, but as a petulant, tech-bro tyrant—a man who believes science and "progress" justify the annihilation of the natural world. This eco-fable undertone gives the film a modern heartbeat, even if the dialogue occasionally stumbles into heavy-handed exposition.



Ultimately, *Red Sonja* is a film that asks the audience to meet it halfway. It requires a suspension of disbelief not just for the magic, but for the production value. It is not the definitive adaptation fans might have dreamed of in 1985, nor is it the glossy reboot of the 2020s. It is a grimy, spirited B-movie that wears its heart on its bloody sleeve. In an era of sterile, committee-designed franchises, there is something weirdly noble about a film that fights this hard just to exist.