MOVIE REVIEW: Red Sonja doesn’t know who Red Sonja is

I never had much interest in the character of Red Sonja. She ended up getting lumped into the “Bad Girl” heroines from the ’90s era of comics. It probably wasn’t fair, but the plate mail bikini armor never made much sense to me. Her connection to Conan was cool, but most of my interest in Conan was from Arnold Schwarzenegger and the ’90s cartoon. I did love the 1985 Brigitte Nielsen-starring Red Sonja film. It featured Schwarzenegger as a Conan-like character. It had Ernie Reyes Jr., who was the coolest martial arts kid in movies at the time, and it was a badass sword and sandals fantasy movie. She fought an evil queen and was the main hero; it felt similar to the old Supergirl (1984) movie to me, but with more fighting.

Fast forward to 2025, and I see that a new Red Sonja film is coming out. I suppose that with the rise of fantasy-based stories following Game of Thrones and The Lord of the Rings, people wanted to give the character another chance for a new generation. I’m sure Director MJ Basset and screenwriter Tasha Huo wanted to make a very good movie here, one that honors the character and has a strong warrior woman hero overcoming the odds. This movie is not good. Watching this movie from the first ten minutes, I was quite shocked by how poorly it was executed.

Matilda Lutz as Red Sonja in the 2025 film Red Sonja.

In this tale, a young Sonja loses her mother and peaceful village to an attack by Barbarians. She lives in the forest with her beloved horse, with whom she can communicate much like what you would see in a Disney animated film. Her life is changed when she tries to stop the soldiers of Emperor Draygan the Magnificent from hunting defenseless animals in her forest. She ends up an enslaved person and in a gladiator pit for some reason. For about half of the film, it feels like a very cheap, straight-to-DVD remake of Gladiator with the poorest effects budget I’ve seen in ages. For some reason, the world has half-mandrill people in it, but no other real fantasy people walking around. I will give credit to the makeup team, as the Mandrill people looked very good in the movie.

There were times when the film’s look reminded me of FMV scenes in CD-ROM PC games and early PlayStation games, such as Command & Conquer, particularly in terms of writing. Matilda Lutz plays the titular Red Sonja, and I don’t want to judge her acting ability by this movie, but it leaves a lot to be desired. It’s a lot of acting on fake sets and tennis balls, I bet, and all she could get out of it was some weird constipated faces and false feelings and emotions. Lutz was not getting good directions for shots of her in this movie. They do end up putting her in the metal bikini as a joke about men putting her in it to look at, but it falls flat in the scene it’s in.

Robert Sheehan as Emperor Draygan in the 2025 film Red Sonja.

Robert Sheehan, who’s probably most well known from Misfits and Umbrella Academy, plays Emperor Draygan, and boy oh boy does he try his damnest to give this movie something with absolutely nothing. This poorly drawn character is the most interesting thing on the screen when he’s there, but even then, I don’t know why he’s doing what he’s doing and how he has his power and magic technology. In the early parts of the film, he exhibits the energy of Prince John from Disney’s Robin Hood, a coward who manipulates his way through things. However, it then shifts to trying to emulate Joaquin Phoenix’s Commodus from Gladiator, and this approach doesn’t really work at all. He gets credit for trying, though.

The film wants us to care about Wallis Day‘s Dark Annisia. She has a cool look, all in white, with platinum blonde hair and eyebrows, along with her gear. She moves cool and is striking visually, but it never works. She’s set up as Sonja’s rival, but in the end, it feels like bad booking in a wrestling match where she just beats Sonja because she is supposed to, after we’ve seen Sonja kill like five huge guys and do all these expert maneuvers to just BONK Annisia wins, but she hears voices. Ugh. A lot of the heft in Red Sonja’s story is gone in this one, as it feels sanded down to be more palatable and have Sonja not have such a violent and triggering backstory to something that just feels very generic and not specific. She doesn’t have the same level of motivation or drive.

Martyn Ford as General Karlak in the 2025 film Red Sonja.

I’m not a ‘so bad it’s good’ kind of person, nor do I have guilty pleasures. I like something because I like it, and if I think something is good, I can explain why. I don’t really have time to watch something I think is bad for enjoyment because I need to review more things (or watch video essays on YouTube). Your mileage may vary, and you might truly love this movie in the way I’m talking about, but for me, Red Sonja was a waste of my time, which is something I find hard to forgive. I don’t like tearing apart people’s creative work because so much effort goes into it from their end, but this movie was truly awful, and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.