Promising Young Woman (2020, Emerald Fennell) (Patreon)

59/100

Spoilers ahoy.

Was kinda blindsided by this, thanks to friends' slightly misleading comments, e.g. Scott Tobias deeming it "an edgeless Ms. 45." That had me expecting a series of righteous revenge murders, when in fact Cassie engages strictly in psychological warfare until the bachelor party. Speaking of which, I'd also glimpsed headlines referring to a "shocking" conclusion, so when we arrived there, and Cassie pulled out the scalpel, I braced myself for something Audition-esque, which is...not what occurs. Had the film dared to end on that wholly unexpected and deliberately demoralizing note, rather than retreat to crowdpleasing wish fulfillment, I'd be more inclined to overlook its many plausibility lapses—most notably, Madison giving Cassie her old phone, a twist that feels painfully contrived even before we discover that the video implicates her nice-guy boyfriend. As is, Promising Young Woman plays very much like Fennell's season of Killing Eve, in which there's just enough "fun" sadism to distract you from how little sense everything makes. I did not buy that even a dweeb played by Mintz-Plasse, upon seeing Cassie abandon her drunk act, would instantly jump to the conclusion that he's potentially in physical danger. (Mulligan's on-a-dime shifts into pitilessness are impressive, but she lacks Jodie Comer's live-wire energy, or any other quality that would register as scary rather than just bewildering.) Nor did I believe that Alfred Molina's guilt-wracked attorney would crank his attrition dial up to 11 within mere seconds of opening his door to a complete stranger. (That scene could have worked had Fennell made even a modest effort to render it credible.) But then Cassie would coolly shiv (metaphorically speaking) an ass-covering college administrator and I'd experience the same dopamine hit that Villanelle's operations reliably produce. So it went, back and forth, right down to the music: dug the score's riffs on "Toxic" (though not so much its insistent prodding at other key moments), rolled my eyes at Juice Newton backing Cassie's payback from beyond the grave. As for the Night of the Hunter homage, I do not advise trying to generate quick pathos by juxtaposing your own banal images with audio from perhaps the most bewitching sequence in cinema history.