Promising Young Womandoesn’t want you to feel comfortable.
In many ways, the movie tells you what it is right from the beginning. You think you’re watching with a certain expectation in mind, an educated guess for how the story will go, and then the script pulls the rug out from under you when you least expect it to and leaves you struggling to reconcile everything you’ve just watched, replaying it all in your mind for clues about where it all could’ve gone sideways.
Warning: Spoilers forPromising Young Womanwithin.
Some of that might very well be a product of marketing; when the first trailer forEmerald Fennell’s skewing debut hit, everything about it screamed feminine catharsis and the promise of payback, from the acutely puncturing strings cover of Britney Spears’ “Toxic” to the frequent cuts to its lead character, Cassandra “Cassie” Thomas (Carey Mulligan) tracking each badly-behaving man she’s targeted as little more than simple tallies in a journal. By all appearances, Cassie is on a mission, one dressed up in bright wigs, rainbow nail polish and expertly-applied lipstick but inwardly driven by simmering rage and the desire to seek revenge for wrongs that had been committed, leading her to drop out of med school. However, in watching the film itself, the plot divulges that Cassie’s actions are driven by the need to not avenge herself — but someone else entirely.
The rape-revenge trope is one that has permeated media over the years, especially horror, but became notoriously more popular and somewhat more infamous after the release of films likeI Spit On Your Gravein 1978. There’s a lot that intersects these movies with the concept of vigilantism — only in this particular subgenre, the heroine survives and endures to enact her own revenge on those who have committed trauma against her directly, rather than serving as a prop to drive a male lead into carrying out vengeance on her behalf. Recent offerings in the rape-revenge trope such as 2017’s aptly-namedRevengeput its lead through both the emotional and physical wringer before finally positioning her as victorious over the men who have most deservedly earned her form of retribution. In the case ofPromising Young Woman, however, one could argue that this movie could be classified closer to rape-vengeance. Cassie serves as an avenging angel for someone who cannot seek their own justice — Nina, her best friend, who died by suicide after the trauma of her rape by one of their classmates (an event that took place with several others witnessing and was later dismissed by the school’s administration).
Cassie’s strategy is carefully planned and in some cases seems almost foolproof; she goes to a bar, presenting herself in any one of several possible guises, pretends to be fall-down drunk or intoxicated by some other means, and then waits for the right Nice Guy to approach her and offer her assistance in getting home. What makes these scenes even more impactful in the performance of them is how they work on a meta level too; when it comes to the film’s casting, there’s something especially brilliant about giving these roles to well-known actors whoarepredominantly known for playing nerdy, unassuming characters in other media. No one would anticipate this kind of predatory behavior from Seth Cohen (Adam Brody), or Piz (Chris Lowell), or even freaking McLovin (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), but there’s an added layer of genius to installing these faces of teen pop culture as much more sinister figures. Mulligan proves herself to be a shrewd and cunning foe opposite all of them, and this movie belongs to her from start to finish; in the first scene with Brody’s character, which plays out much the same way in the trailer, she glances up at the ceiling (and the camera by extension) with a smirk, breaking the fourth wall for just a second to signal to the audience that we’re in on it with her now.
Contrary to what the trailer may imply, however, Cassie’s modus operandi isn’t one of violence but manipulation; her goal isn’t to kill any of these men or subject them to a more tortuous fate, but rather to make them look inward, to examine their own discomfort after being stood up to by a girl who isn’t as easy prey as they might have initially believed. But in the same vein, the script tracks her slow descent into darker places; even as she finds herself considering the possibility of new love with a seemingly decent man, Ryan (Bo Burnham), she is portrayed as becoming more and more addicted to her own revenge mission, almost incapable of taking a night off from her patterns. When Cassie learns that the man who raped Nina, Alexander Monroe (Lowell), is making preparations for his upcoming wedding, she decides to specifically set her sights on people who she views as having played their own role in Nina’s demise, methodically targeting former classmates as well as the dean of their alma mater. But while the film would initially lead you to believe that she is setting them up for stomach-churning physical trauma, it turns out that Cassie’s primary aim is simply to inject these people with a mere taste of what she witnessed her best friend experience in the years following her rape, to let them experience even the briefest dose of fear and panic that visited Nina during that hellish night.
For a time, though, even Cassie is diverted from her goals; a visit to Nina’s mother (Molly Shannon) results in the older woman telling Cassie that she needs to lay down the weights that she’s been carrying since Nina’s death, that anything she might be doing now won’t be good for her in the long run. It’s a quiet note of foreshadowing, but one Cassie ultimately doesn’t heed when she discovers that her new beau Ryan was one of the people present the night that Nina was raped — and there’s video evidence to prove it. From that moment on, it’s clear that Cassie feels she can trust absolutely no one at all, even as she makes preparations for her ultimate confrontation with Monroe himself.
The conclusion is unquestionably going to be one of its most divisive plot points among viewers. Whether you think it was successful in its aims or not is more likely a case of personal taste, but there’s no denying that Fennell is making a bold statement in what transpires when Cassie shows up at Monroe’s bachelor party disguised as a stripper. When she knocks out the rest of the male party-goers with spiked liquor, it gives her the chance to be alone with the groom-to-be himself. But a seeming twist of fate and a pair of flimsy fuzzy handcuffs prove to be enough for Monroe to slip free before Cassie can carry out her plan of carving Nina’s name into his stomach, overpowering her and smothering her to death with a pillow. It’s worth noting that this is the sole instance in which Cassie personally attempts a more physical form of payback, only to have that attempt tragically reversed. Her abandonment of her previous psychological methods for something tangible proves to be her downfall, but the real tragedy is that her death is almost treated as a consequence for her actions — something that her murderer, the male friend who helps dispose of her body, every other man she has ever defied, believes he is immune from.
It seems unfair to call the ending a bait-and-switch, even in spite of how the film was marketed to audiences, when the bitter truth is that for many women this is just reality — a depressing pill to swallow, but one that perhaps weshouldbe struggling to process, that maybe weneedto be wrestling with because of how often violence is carried out not only against white women on a regular basis but in much higher numbers against women of color, trans women, women from Indigenous communities, women with much less privilege and fewer resources.
The film’s biggest gut-punch, one that has sat with me ever since my first viewing, is that Cassie’s death, when it happens, is the product of a brutal whim, pure instinct, a spontaneous choice with no consideration about any long-term repercussions. Even if there is catharsis found in the vengeance she is able to carry out from the beyond, it’s vengeance she still had to arrange as a contingency, and it came at the cost of her name added on to the list of victims whose lives were ruined by the most entitled of us who only walk through the world with themselves in mind. WithPromising Young Woman, Fennell has left us dwelling on the conflicting and sobering notion that while women have to plan for every eventuality, men get to kill without a second thought.
