The astounding Gone Girl, unfortunately, it is not. The disappointing The Girl on the Train, fortunately, it is not. First-time director Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman (intentional or not) falls somewhere in between, even if that was never anyone’s intention or consideration. I mention comparing the three because 2014’s nearly flawless Gone Girl was this intense, methodical movie based on a novel centered on revenge against a man she felt had wronged her. Then it felt like 2016’s The Girl on the Train was a movie that was rightfully or wrongfully being compared and expected to be as successful as Gone Girl, partially because it was also based on a very successful novel, had an A-list leading actress (Rosamund Pike, Emily Blunt) had an edgy and creepy vibe to it, and ironically had the word “Girl” in the title. Promising Young Woman has elements of both movies. It has an amped-up revenge plot similar to Gone Girl and the mystery detective aspect of The Girl on the Train. You don’t need to watch either of the movies mentioned above to see Promising Young Woman. While it borrows from both, this film carries its own weight, though it doesn’t hurt to be in the same conversation as two well-known films in the movie community.
Pike, deservedly so, was nominated for her first-ever Best Leading Actress Academy Award for Gone Girl as the disgruntled, young trophy wife of a successful writer who feels the need to exact revenge after her husband makes her mostly irrelevant in his life, outside of using her for sex. She is the story’s heroine; we understand her motive and root for her, even when we might not always agree with her methods. You’ll feel similarly about Cassie (Carey Mulligan – Drive, Shame), an unstable 30-year-old woman who (through both the trailer and the film’s first scene’s reveal) spends her nights moonlighting as a one-person vigilante.
Her superhero strength is pretending to be so drunk that she can barely walk, speak, or keep her eyes open, only for a “nice guy” to ask if she’s okay and promise to take care of her, only to realize the opportunity being gift-wrapped to him, and decides instead to bring Cassie back to his home and try to take advantage of her under the influence state. In contrast, she repeatedly asks, “What are you doing?” only to then surprise her seducer by showing she is stone-cold sober before laying into his womanizer about the intent of what he was going to do with a woman who he thought was capable of making any rational decisions.
She brings many “nice guys” to their knees, having them apologize profusely and ask what she will do to them before finally asking them to leave. In the film’s first scene, her sacrificial lamb for the night is Jerry (Adam Brody – television’s The O.C.). It is right after we see Jerry remove her undergarments that we see Cassie’s half-closed eyes open widely for the first time as she looks towards the ceiling where our camera is positioned and breaks the fourth wall for the first and only time in the film to let us know that this is her game with her rules. We are in on the act with her.
Though we are just 10-15 minutes into the movie by this point, it is unknown to the audience what kind of movie this would be. It has “comedy” listed as one of its genres, and while there is some black humor, it’s not strong enough or plentiful enough for me to give it that label. It does make for much inconsistency as the film slowly reveals itself. And while there are some dramatic themes, I wouldn’t classify this as your typical drama. Though not a documentary, it feels like a less successful I, Tonya, which is a good thing, as I, Tonya, was nominated for three Oscars in 2017. Another comparable movie to Promising Young Woman is the disappointing 2018 film A Simple Favor. Promising Young Woman wasn’t disappointing, though. Instead, it was a smartly crafted, though erratically presented, character-driven revenge movie with a slow burn.
If you don’t try to analyze this movie as much as I did, you will thoroughly enjoy the film. I appreciated it even as I tried to dig into the inconsistencies and imagine what could be changed to make it more polished. However, I sometimes disagreed with Fennell’s approach. Through a critic’s lens, there were a few too many coincidences for me, such as how Ryan (Bo Burnham, The Big Sick) randomly reenters Cassie’s life the way he does and how he is the one who eventually manages to penetrate her self-created safeguards. Likewise, after Ryan catches her leaving a bar with another man, hours after he caught her in a string of lies (the final of which she said she would go home for the night rather than have dinner with him), he takes her back much too easily. Though he was hurt, she could convince him that her being with another would never happen again. She promises him this without offering him anything more. He doesn’t push her on this (though everyone else I know would require a much better explanation) because, as we know, it would give away the story. When they suddenly dance and sing to Paris Hilton in an extended pharmacy shopping scene as if nothing happened, it seems a little far-fetched. Again, I understand that Fennell’s approach to this movie differed from what I would have taken.
Cassie’s story slowly comes together as the movie unfolds. I’ve already given away much of the plot and many spoilers without a single alert, so why stop now? If you’ve made it this far, you’ve likely already seen it and would like to hear my thoughts if you are still reading this as a preview of whether you should see it. Oops. Tortured by the rape and subsequent suicide of her best friend Nina to “nice guy” classmate Al Monroe (Chris Lowell – The Help, Up in the Air) at a fraternity-type party and the School Board’s decision not to hold the accused accountable because of lack of evidence, Cassie drops out of the medical school of a prestigious university to work in a tiny, nearby coffee shop where she struggles through the boredom of a job that doesn’t challenge her while unsuccessfully processing the loss of Nina. While she doesn’t know how to make the perpetrators fully pay for their misdeeds, she does her best to make sure other “nice guys” don’t get away with the same. It’s all she can do to camouflage her misery, knowing that her best friend’s rape went unpunished, which resulted in Nina’s depression and eventual suicide.
Through Cassie’s slow, deliberately uneven character reveal, Fennell shows us that Nina was not a victim of one privileged “nice guy,” but instead of an establishment that gives the accused the benefit of the doubt in a he-said/she-said system. The release of the movie comes just a couple of years after the height of the #metoo movement that seemed to be over (for many) as soon as some of the most significant political and entertainment names (Bill Cosby, Matt Lauer, Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Ryan Adams, Woody Allen, Louis CK, James Franco, Al Franken, Roy Price, Charlie Rose, many others) were either found guilty in court or guilty in the court of public opinion, at the same time as other movements and worldwide issues (Black Lives Matter, COVID-19) took more of the headlines away. Fennell’s film reminds us that #MeToo wasn’t just a blip on the radar. Once the criminal justice system cannot protect Nina and those like her, Cassie makes it her mission to do so herself. While she continually puts herself in potentially dangerous situations, it’s clear she’s living on borrowed time in her attempts to clean up her city. While physically at her peak (she turns 30 years of age during the movie), she’s been emotionally numb since losing Nina. Worse, she feels like she’s the only one who cannot let the passing of her friend go.
Cassie puts herself even further at risk when she is alerted through a social media app called Fender (think Facebook) that the classmate who raped Nina is engaged to be married. All of the emotional wounds that she had been covering up in her attempts to make sure what happened to Nina never happened to another woman come spilling out when she can once again put names to faces. The happiness and joy expressed on his social media page enrage her. She makes it her mission to go after those who have to live their lives so freely and happily while her best friend lies in a grave. The movie takes a different turn at this point, and it almost feels like two different movies mixed into one. This is where some confusion, inconsistencies, and “conveniences” come into play. I’m not going to knock the film because of it, but Promising Young Woman certainly doesn’t flow down the hatch like a fine wine.
There will also be a lot of discussion on how the movie ends. It’s not your typical Hollywood ending, and that is where the film succeeds: it leaves you feeling sad and wondering if you were just a pawn the whole time, like many of the other (really all but one or two) deadbeat male characters. Many will not like the ending at all. Others will think it’s tragic. Some will think it’s genius. It certainly didn’t go 100% as planned, and part of that was because Cassie changed her mode of operation and intended to inflict far more pain than any of her other victims. Still, she was the character you rooted for and cheered for, so you want to see her victorious. Was she, or was she not? I think that’s left for you to decide, and I think a lot of that has to do with your stance on mental illness (particularly PTSD) as well as your feelings about unprosecuted violence against women. Was Cassie ultimately victorious in the end? Would she have thought so? Many lingering questions have no right or wrong answers, which is often a sign of a successful movie.
Promising Young Woman certainly has an audience. Way more people will love it than hate it. It is flawed, and if it’s hard for you to appreciate a movie that tries to be a different type of movie multiple times, you may struggle. Inconsistency is not my favorite word when it comes to my moviegoing experience. If Mulligan doesn’t earn a Best Actress nomination, it will be the snub of the year. She was unbelievable as the pragmatic Cassie, hell-bent on doing right for her best friend after those who were supposed to protect her failed to do so.
Plot 9.5/10 (this is a highly original story)
Character Development 10/10
Character Chemistry 8/10
Acting 8/10 (Mulligan on her own is a 10/10…Burnham is great…the rest are average or poor…Lowell was terrible, as were both of his scenes…intentional or unintentional, he was a big miss)
Screenplay 8/10 (it suffered from inconsistencies and time lapses for sure. I imagine the book didn’t suffer the same fate)
Directing 8.5/10
Cinematography 9/10
Sound 10/10 (quite the soundtrack)
Hook and Reel 10/10 (you’ll be interested the whole time, even as your interest/enjoyment of the film will likely waver)
Universal Relevance 10/10
91%
A
Movies You Might Like If You Liked This Movie
- Saltburn
- The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
- Gone Girl
- Oldboy
- The Girl on the Train