Promising Young Woman

I wish I had more kind words to say about this. The idea of a #MeToo rape-revenge fantasy movie, without having to bear witness to the ugliness of the rape itself, and not being exploitive like I Spit On Your Grave, has merit. But this is not it. This movie has a lot of problems. Number one is the pacing. It gives you information, but not enough when it makes sense. The backstory of why Cassie is like she is gets drip-fed through the movie, and it shouldn't be. You get a piece of it, then in awhile another piece, and then in a while, another piece, and in between, long stretches of what feels like time-filler, or moving the chess pieces into place for the next big revelation. This ruins the movement of the story. It's not up and down, it's start and stop. The second major problem is that it never knows how it wants Cassie to be. Her character's intentions are constantly shifting, and never make sense. Why has she internalized her friend's rape and turned it into her crusade? Why has she been humiliating men for months, if not years now? Why does it take information on social media that could be readily found for her to seek vengeance on those who wronged Nina? What does she hope all this will accomplish? None of this is given much in the way of explanation. The movie clearly WANTS her to be seen as a noble vigilante, a sort-of feminist Falling Down, and that's a great idea, but it keeps under-cutting her. There's a scene where she has a confrontation with a driver that results in her bashing in his taillights and windshield with a tire iron. The music swells as the driver peels away, scared shitless, into this heroic, almost bombastic, crescendo ... but literally every other component in the movie is screaming out that Cassie is losing her grip. When she meets Ryan, the movie again does itself no favors by giving us this "love makes the voices go away" narrative; suddenly, because she has a boyfriend, everything's okay! She doesn't need vengeance anymore! She's right and stable and happy to be alive again! Even if it isn't permanent, it's still a betrayal of everything this movie is TRYING to stand for. But perhaps the biggest problem with this movie is Carey Mulligan. Other than a single scene laughter, she has less emotion than Daria. That would be fine if this were telling a different side of this story, but it doesn't fit this avenging angel. I got nothing from her; no determination, no righteous indignance, no sorrow, no joy, no anything, at any time. She doesn't need to be over the top with it, but she's playing it under the bottom. I don't believe for one minute that she's hurt about what happened to her friend. Maybe if this was more about Cassie taking on Nina's trauma and sending her into a downward spiral, maybe the robotic, wooden behavior would make sense. But what she's doing in this movie, there should be SOMETHING, and Mulligan is just lifeless. And, I gotta say that the movie's approach to a pro-feminist message is faulty, pie-in-the-sky nonsense. We never see the after-effects of Cassie's actions to know effective they are. We never see what happens to the sex predators who think they're "nice guys", or to women who look the other way, or people in positions of power who use the "don't make yourself vulnerable" and "let's not ruin the boy's life" excuses. The movie sets it up as if her actions convince these people the error of their ways, like a warped Jiminy Cricket or Jacob Marley. BUT WE DON'T SEE THAT. All we see is what she does, and then it's gone, and here in the real world, we know that what she's doing wouldn't make anybody think twice or change their outlook. Yes, it's a fantasy, but this is a toxic, dangerous fantasy. Destroying rape culture and getting men to see past their own warped self-image of "nice guy" isn't as simple as swatting a dog on the nose with a newspaper, but this movie sure as hell seems to think so. I know this got Oscar noms and so much praise, and I wished I saw what everybody else does. But I don't. This is a seriously flawed movie. Not terrible, but its flaws are too heavy for me to ignore or excuse.