'Red Sonja' (2025) Movie Review

There’s been talk of a new Red Sonja movie for what feels like forever. Multiple stars and high-profile filmmakers have been attached in one form or another, until it seemed like it was destined to languish just out of reach in development hell. But here we are, in the year of our lord 2025, and M.J. Bassett, the director behind Solomon Kane and Rogue, among others, has finally delivered the goods. 

 

Bassett’s Red Sonja, working from a script by Tasha Huo (The Witcher: Blood Origin), understands the assignment and knows exactly what movie it is. This is pure goofy, B-movie sword-and-sorcery. We’ve got monsters, we’ve got scene-chewing, we’ve got sweeping tales of betrayal and revenge, and, most importantly, we’ve got badass action scenes. Some folks are going to look at this and dismiss it instantly as cheap and hokey—it certainly is those things, but I argue that’s a feature, not a bug—but people who are down with the genre should have a blast.

 

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Matilda Lutz (Revenge) takes the title role, hacking and slashing her way through the Hyborian Age. After a barbarian king destroys her peaceful, idyllic village, she’s orphaned and alone, left to wander the wilderness searching for the remnants of her people with only a sassy horse bestie as company. (Give your heroine a ride-or-die equine friend and I’m in the bag for your movie from the jump.) Her quest leads her afoul of the sinister emperor Draygan (Robert Sheehan, The Umbrella Academy), along with his witchy right hand, Annisia (Wallis Day, Krypton), and she winds up thrown in the fighting pits, where she must, as you probably guessed, fight.

 

The core conflict of Red Sonja is really between those attuned to nature, who seek to exist in balance with the world around them, and those opposed to it. Think those who hunt for food and use every bit of an animal versus trophy hunters who take a skin and leave the rest to rot. Draygan seeks to clearcut the forest and strip mine the mountains to fuel his modern machines and exploit natural resources to serve his own ends. It’s not what you would call subtle in its messaging, and Sonja essentially fills the role of the defender and avenger of the natural realm. 

 

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While the film has tentpole aspirations, this is not a mega-bucks, endless resources scale blockbuster. A few of the creature effects look dodgy, wider shots of bigger cities and arenas don’t fit seamlessly, and there are times when the financial limitations are obvious. But to Bassett’s credit, she’s able to instill a big, epic feel without overreliance on digital trickery. She uses stunning landscapes and fills the frame with sweeping grandeur, strategically deploying visual effects only when necessary and in ways that are easy to gloss over if you’re engrossed in the story. 

 

Lutz plays Sonja straight up. She’s not asked to stretch much, but she does a solid job selling the swordplay and action, even taking time to poke fun and traditional garb female characters wear in fantasy tales. (Who among us hasn’t fought in an arena in a chainmail bikini?) Sheehan is a hoot and goes absolutely ham at every available opportunity, while Day’s Annisia is spooky and looks like she may actually hear the voices that haunt the character. Surrounding them is a murderer’s row of DTV stalwarts, like Martyn Ford (Mad Max: Fury Road), Philip Winchester (Strike Back), Rhona Mitra (Hounds of War), MMA star Michael Bisping (Triple Threat), and more. 

 

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Red Sonja may be full of stock fantasy characters, but it carves out the space to develop many of them, to give them their own stories and emotional beats, even in small moments. Warriors Hawk (Bisping) and Petra (Mitra) have a sweet, earnest romance amidst the clashing of medieval weapons. There’s more to dreamy lothario Osin the Untouched (Luca Pasqualino, Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome) than initially meets the eye. Even Draygan, over the top as he can be, is who he is because of his past and accumulated traumas. Their stories touch on mental illness, legacies of violence, gaslighting, addiction, and other themes and ideas. Everyone is broken and damaged in their own ways and just trying to become whole again. It’s deceptively deft character work and not only creates texture but gives these people and this world more depth and heft. Again, it’s easier to forgive other blemishes if you care about what’s going on.

 

And all of this is wrapped up in a big action package, which is the true selling point of a movie like this. Bassett shoots the hell out of major battles and close-quarters, hand-to-hand tussles alike. It delivers all the swords (though it’s a little light on the sorcery) that the concept promises.

 

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Your mileage is certainly going to vary with Red Sonja. A lot of people are going to dismiss off hand as junk or cable-ready genre schlock. But there’s more to it if you’re willing to look past flaws and limitations, and there’s a fun, entertaining, admittedly ridiculous, and occasionally affecting movie here, and it doesn’t try to be much beyond that. And there’s a cyclops! [Grade: B]