SXSW 2026 Film Reviews: ‘Normal’ with Bob Odenkirk and ‘Pretty Lethal’ with Uma Thurman Lead the Way with Tropes

Iconic filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock said, “To make a great film, you need three things: the script, the script and the script.” Two of the films at the 2026 edition of the South by Southwest (SXSW) Conference and Festivals exemplified this: Normal written by Derek Kolstad, known for John Wick films, and Pretty Lethal, written by Kate Freund.

Both films used what screenwriters, and storytellers in general, refer to as tropes. Tropes are story elements which viewers have grown to depend on to guide them through a particular story world. These are not cliches, which evoke a negative reaction or eye roll, but connections to shared cultural experiences.

New Sheriff in Town

Normal, starring Bob Odenkirk (Breaking Bad), Lena Headey (Game of Thrones), and Henry Winkler (Happy Days) uses the new sheriff in town trope. The story takes place in the modern-day town of Normal, where a new temporary replacement sheriff, played by Odenkirk, uncovers mysterious clues after a bank robbery. Then everybody wants to shoot him.

After the screening, during a Q&A including Odenkirk, screenwriter Kolstad and director Ben Wheatley, the inspiration for the film came up. Wheatley was quite specific in recalling a conversation with Odenkirk, suggesting that they take the Old West trope and move it to a modern city. Odenkirk ran with the idea and earned a “Story by” credit for the film.

Did this work? Absolutely. The movie begins with the bad guys, not banditos but Japanese yakuza, hatching their plot. It then moves on to Odenkirk establishing himself as a sheriff in the town. The sheriff’s story is so compelling that as I watched, I temporarily forgot about the yakuza.

And it is exciting. The fight scenes were amazing. Kolstad recalled his best memory of the filming on the last day. He said, “It was like summer camp. I thought, ‘Can we do this again?’.”

Normal will open in theaters April 17.

Pretty Lethal

Ballerinas doing judo? Sounds Pretty Lethal to me, and that’s what you’ll find in this most unusual action/thriller. The film stars Maddie Ziegler (My Old Ass) and Lana Condor (Abbott Elementary) as two of the top ballerinas, and Uma Thurman (Pulp Fiction, Dexter: Resurrection) as the evil doer.

Screenwriter Kate Freund uses a common but effective trope to draw us into Pretty Lethal: the cabin in the woods.

We meet the ballerinas in London where they find out they will be part of an international championship competition in Hungary. They fly to Hungary, then hop on a bus to get to the competition. Going through a forest, the bus breaks down. No problem, we’ll walk the rest of the way. Then it starts to rain. Look! A big house on the hill. They’ll let us in.

So, it’s a big house, not a cabin, but the results are the same: locked in an isolated structure and people want to kill you. As the story unfolds, you see this trope developing, but it works because you’ve already connected with the ballerinas. Your reaction is not, “Oh, cabin in the woods,” but “Oh no, don’t do it girls!”

This trope works so well, some studios have cabin in the woods sets.

Uma Thurman at SXSW 2026

Beyond this trope which sets things up, Pretty Lethal grabs you because it contains conflicts on multiple levels. The ballerinas need to defend themselves, but within their group they have conflicts. They are threatened by the owner of the house, played by Uma Thurman, who has both internal and external conflicts. Thurman’s gangs of bad guys don’t like each other much either. Things get complicated.

During the Q&A after the screening, several of the women involved commented on how this was more than just a film, but an exercise in female empowerment.

Screenwriter Kate Freund recalled, “I wrote this in 2016, and people told me for years that you can’t have an action script without girls dying. I said ‘No!’ I don’t want any of these girls to die.”

Director Vicky Jewson shared that the ballerina character in the film who was deaf was actually played by a deaf actress. She also described her vision for the production environment: “I wanted it to be like a summer camp. They worked together for twelve hours per day.”

Uma Thurman summed things up: “Oh my gosh. I put 40 years in this business, and I get to watch women working together and changing the effect of film on women. And tonight, I see what I wished for all those years and it’s extremely gratifying.”

The film definitely lives up to its tagline: “Blood, sweat and tutus.” You can watch Pretty Lethal on Amazon Prime and find its trailer below.

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