‘Pretty Babies’ review: Hollywood dreams turn into a nightmare in gritty, uneasy US debut

Dir/scr: Tyler-Marie Evans. US. 2026. 92mins

A Hollywood dream turns into a nightmare for two naive teenage girls in this raw, hard-hitting debut from US writer/director Tyler-Marie Evans. Confident they are destined for fame, eighteen-year-old-best friends Marie (Emily Alyn Lind) and Luna (Sadie Stanley) skip their boring small town and make their way to the bright lights of Los Angeles – only to find the road there is far darker than they had expected. Gritty and gruelling, with pockets of warmth, Pretty Babies shines a light on the realities of life for millions of wannabes, even if its heightened, melodramatic tone threatens to overwhelm its slice-of-life authenticity.

Its heightened, melodramatic tone threatens to overwhelm its slice-of-life authenticity

There may be comparisons drawn between this Edinburgh competition premiere and Anora, as both follow sex workers living in a fantasy world, but Pretty Babies (which boats Christine Vachon amongst its producers) also has much in common with American Honey and other US road movies which navigate the country’s unsavoury underbelly. Strong performances from Stanley and Gossip Girl star Lind are the film’s major selling points, and its Thelma And Louise-coded focus on female friendship may also help it into limited theatrical release.

Stuck in an unspecified dead-end midwest town (the film shot in Oklahoma), highschoolers Marie and Luna spend their time escaping into old Hollywood movies and have become obsessed with glamorous stars like Hedy Lamarr, Joan Crawford and Bette Davis. Deciding to follow in their footsteps, they take off for LA – but soon find themselves running low on funds. When they pick up older hitchhiking prostitutes Gemma (Madelaine Petsch) and Sapphire (Ashley Benson), they have their eyes opened to a new source of income. Promising themselves its only temporary, Marie and Luna take their first steps into sex work.

From there, the film inhabits a shadowy world of run-down motels and predatory men; the only source of light comes from Luna and Marie’s closeness and, later, the friendship they strike up with Gemma and Sapphire. Yet, over time, even these bonds take on a transactional quality, as the larger-than-life Luna, determined not to lose sight of her dreams, gently coerces a quieter, far more hesitant Marie to do whatever it takes to get to Hollywood.

Throughout, Evans’ screenplay combines with costuming choices from Alyssa Blair Cawthon (including plenty of glitter) to emphasise both Marie and Luna’s youthful desirability and intense vulnerability – something that starts before they leave town, with an impromptu, breathy performance of ‘I’ve Written A Letter To Daddy’ from What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? At times, the film strikes an uneasy balance, the camera lingering on these girls in their skimpy clothes – and, more egregiously, two heavy-handed uses of sexual violence as a blunt plot device. There’s no doubt that this is the unpleasant reality for hundreds of girls, and the film makes a point about the violent objectification of women, but it can sometimes feel exploitative rather than revelatory.

Performances are more grounded, with Stanley in particular capturing Luna’s unshakable confidence which, with each new encounter, slowly curdles into delusion and desperation. While Marie is more subdued, less sure-footed, Lind never allows her to be overshadowed by either Luna’s vivaciousness or the events unfolding around her; when she strikes out on her own, to follow a new romance to Las Vegas, the film begins to take on a more optimistic air – even if this happiness is clearly on shaky ground. Here, as in the rest of the film, editor Benjamin Rodriguez Jr splices in brief sequences from classic Hollywood romances, providing an effective contrast between the girls’ starry-eyed ambitions, the lies they have been fed by the silver screen and the brutal world in which they now find themselves trapped.