Ballerina wrecked me in ways I didn’t see coming. because it carried this mix of beauty and brutality that sat in my chest like a weight long after the credits faded.
And this is on the surface, a revenge story, smooth, sharp, violent but somehow you expect that it should numb you. But it does not. All the battles, all the bloody action, is tinged with this pain, as though the death were the byproduct of mourning done up in the form of fight scenes. That is what I remembered. The movie never allowed you to forget why the violence was occurring--why all the kicking, all the slashing, all the gunshots were not just spectacle but a reminder of loss.
Some of the moments literally kicked me in the stomach. It is this silence prior to the tempest, these moments when you look at the character standing in her own sadness, nearly overwhelmed by it, and then it all just bursts out. It seemed to be honest in that way--not is not grief like that? You keep it inside, you attempt to breathe and it just comes out of you in ways beyond your control.
The thing is, however, that even through all of the bleakness there was a moment or two when I found myself smirking, either at just how well-written the dialogue was, or at how one scene managed to turn stylized action into something almost poetic. It was not funny-ha-ha, but it was hit-you-over-the-head clever as in how the movie knew it had to give you some little breath of air before dropping you back under the sea.
The cinematography- God it is beautiful. Streets that are neon drenched, shadows that you feel like they are characters, the juxtaposition of beauty and sheer violence. It is Ballerina, and that name stays with you in all aspects of it: the fighting patterns, the grace and the destruction it balances so delicately. You find yourself as a spectator of both an angry and a sorrow dance.
When I left, I realized what it really did to me—it reminded me how thin the line is between love and loss, between beauty and brutality. That revenge, as cathartic as it looks, is really just another shade of grief. And that’s why it stuck. Because it didn’t just entertain me, it made me feel something real, raw, and honestly a little uncomfortable—but in a way I couldn’t shake.
So yeah, Ballerina wasn’t just a movie I watched—it was something I carried with me, like the ghost of a song that refuses to leave your head.
Thumbnail is designed by me on pixelLab and other images are screenshot from the movie