TW: This piece discusses violence against women and sexual assault as well as reveals spoilers about the film.

From the moment I first saw the trailer for Promising Young Woman, I was hooked. I was so excited to see the film that I didn’t even mind shelling out $20 to watch it On-Demand; however, that purchase was a lot harder to justify after actually having watched the movie.

The trailer promised me that at least one would-be rapist was going to die, but instead, I watched Carey Mulligan’s Cassie give men some stern talking-tos for an hour and fifty-four minutes, only to watch her get brutally murdered in the finale. I couldn’t help but feel like I had been tricked. What was the sense in taking so much time to make the movie seem like a feminist film, only for the last thirty minutes to completely tank all of those themes by killing off the main character?

To say the movie left a bad taste in my mouth would be an understatement, and all I wanted to do was warn people to change their expectations before watching it.

I.

Promising Young Woman did have some things going for it—namely, the brilliant artistic choices made throughout the film, such as the cinematography and the setting.

The film had a gorgeous color palette that juxtaposed against the sometimes-horror movie, sometimes-bubblegum pop score and soundtrack. The use of blues and pinks both in the lighting design and the set & wardrobe subtly communicated gender and power dynamics throughout the film, making the woman-centered themes foundational to the storytelling.

The movie also showcased actors that are typically cast as gentle male characters to play on the audience’s preconceived notions of the ‘nice guy’ archetype, in order to drive home the film's criticism of how any guy could become violent. Emerson alum Gina York gushed about these casting choices, saying, “Adam Brody usually plays such sweethearts! So, when I was watching the movie, I remember texting my friend and saying, ‘Adam Brody’s not going to assault her, right!?’ because I couldn’t believe that Adam Brody could do it.”

II.

Despite the good things happening in production, the film’s first set of flaws appear in the execution of Cassie’s revenge plans. Cassie’s outlandish idea of revenge was to inflict as much trauma onto others as what was inflicted upon her and her childhood best friend Nina while in college, which is fundamentally troubling.

“I have a lot of ethical problems with the movie,” said Laura Abell, a junior social work major at Millersville University. “You can’t solve violence and harassment with more violence and harassment.” However, the film fails to properly condemn Cassie’s problematic response—and since the only ‘justice’ we really see Cassie execute is through causing trauma to others, the film isn’t putting out a positive message about this reaction.

My particular issue with Cassie’s revenge is that she only manages to actually inflict trauma onto other women, which is counterproductive to the seemingly feminist message of the film. There’s no justification for letting Madison, played by Alison Brie, believe that she had been assaulted for half the film just because she had perpetuated rape culture, nor was there any reason to kidnap a minor and then lead a woman to believe that her daughter was going to get gang-raped by a pack of college boys. Those actions were inexcusable and failed to address the culture that taught these women to give rapists the benefit of the doubt in the first place. For this reason, I don’t think Cassie’s character was a feminist, nor do I think her form of revenge was in any way empowering to watch.

III.

The ending of the film has clearly been the most divisive part of the story—and for good reason. Killing off the main character in a movie is a bold choice, but depicting a very long, very graphic murder of an otherwise-powerful woman is a completely new level of horror.

Cassie’s on-screen murder lasted for two and a half minutes—the actual amount of time it would take to suffocate someone to death using a pillow—which was unnecessarily triggering for myself and many other viewers. Abell said that this scene left her upset and unsatisfied with the film as a whole. “It was a little inappropriate to show the whole murder. The guys didn’t get tortured at all, but when we get to Cassie’s death, [the director] decides to milk that scene. It was excessive.” 

The setting and shooting of the scene also made Cassie’s murder particularly difficult to stomach; by setting the scene on a bed, combined with Al using his physical dominance to trap Cassie while he smothers her to death, the scene visually parallelled a rape scene, which was an especially gruesome choice.

So much of the movie was exaggerated, so for the most grounded scene to showcase a woman getting brutalized, I couldn’t get on board. There are too many movies made by men that already do this, so I didn’t need a female director to give me the same content. Especially not when the conclusion to the film was unsatisfactory and left justice unserved since the rest of the film proved how ineffective the justice system is at protecting women and holding everyone that was involved accountable.

In an already exaggerated film, I just wanted to see the woman beat the bad guy and walk away from the fight.

IV. 

Ultimately, my main problem with Promising Young Woman boils down to the marketing of the film. It was advertised as a feminist revenge film, and while the story was certainly female-oriented, there’s something distinctly anti-feminist in creating yet another thriller where women are abused and degraded on-screen. I went into this film expecting to find catharsis from the everyday nightmare that is rape culture, and instead, I was forced to watch a woman get graphically murdered by a rapist. I didn’t want or need to see that, and I’m not sure if anyone else did, either.

The women that this movie had been advertised to certainly didn’t need to be reminded that most men could probably physically overpower and kill us if they really felt like it. The story is too female-centered to appeal to a male audience, but the message is lost in the echo-chamber of women for whom the threat (and execution) of male violence is already an inescapable reality.

The trailer refers to the film as “a delicious new take on revenge” and I simply can’t agree, unless that “new take” is that Cassie never actually gets revenge. “She never completes her quest to get revenge—she wasn’t given any justice in the end! [Al getting arrested] wasn’t enough to call this a revenge movie,” said Abell, who was shocked to hear how the movie has been advertised.

However, Gina York did not have an issue with the film’s marketing strategy. “If [marketing the film as a revenge thriller] is what’s going to bring new people to see the movie, then I think it was a great choice,” said York. I was duped by the trailers and walked away from the movie needing to talk to any and everyone about the ending. In this way, York was right; the misleading advertising sparked conversations about violence against women and what justice for survivors of male violence should be.

There's no doubt that the movie was a social commentary, but it wasn’t about exacting revenge, and it wasn’t cathartic for the women watching it; for that reason alone, I take issue with the advertising. If you’re hoping to watch an actual feminist revenge film on your next movie night, opt for Jennifer’s Body instead of Promising Young Woman. This is not to say that Promising Young Woman isn’t worth watching, but I can’t in good conscience recommend anyone sees the film without a crucial trigger warning.