Film Review | Netflix

Uglies (2024) — Netflix adaptation of YA novel is a decade too late

A world in which a compulsory operation wipes out physical differences and makes everyone pretty.

Did we need yet another young adult dystopian science fiction movie adaptation? Netflix certainly thinks so with its latest original feature film offering, Uglies. Adapted from Scott Westerfield’s first 2005 dystopian novel in a four-part series, it’s set in a world 300 years in the future. Society has collapsed after exhausting the Earth’s natural resources, but scientists have managed to create a genetically modified orchid which acts as a new, unlimited energy source, saving humanity in the process. The new world order eliminates inequalities between humans using the great equaliser of beauty (read: forced conformity) via comprehensive plastic surgery. The world is hence separated between new castes of Uglies and Pretties, and rumoured resistance exists in a place called The Smoke.

Tally Youngblood (Joey King) is a rebellious 15-year-old whose worst problem is that her best friend and will-they-won’t-they love…