I totally get why this movie was so divisive. I thought it had some really good ideas, and some really bad ones, never getting the tone fully right to wind up where it ultimately did.



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2.5/5

Ultimately glad I waited to see this at home.

The romantic comedy portion is pretty boilerplate, in a way that feels intended to be subversive for audiences but instead feels subversive to the material itself.

Meanwhile, the thriller aspects are also intensely indebted to the message they want to sell, b-movie grade nose candy for audiences clamoring for this sort of thing.

And I was that audience! Remained so for months and months, in fact. Not even The Ringer's Amanda Dobbins' outright dismissal of this film could curtail my interest in it.

Here's where I say, from the moment I saw Clancy Brown and Jennifer Coolidge next to each other, I couldn't help but want for this to turn into an Easy A for the adults in the room. They deserved a couple Clarkson/Tucci moments.

There's plenty to dig into, too. The artificial technicolor presentation of Cassie's world plays like crazy, and asking Mulligan to do this schtick off the likes of Mintz-Plasse, Brody, Brie, Burnham (b-b-b) and so on is a strong stroke of casting. To their credit, they all know what they're doing here and don't hold back.

The trouble for me, ultimately, is that the core competency of Cassie is so far removed from a truly horrific villain - the gene therapy of The Fly, the damned id of Halloween - that one has trouble removing parody from true societal pain. Promising Young Woman is so wanting of its importance that it often misses the opportunities it has to be one of two really, really emotionally engaging trips. Whether crushing a trashcan with her foot or lipsyncing to Paris Hilton, Mulligan sells this character. It's just that the movie can't help but be confused by her.

There's a gleeful malevolence to this film that cuts through the schlock and admits what the best version of Promising Young Woman is - particularly when Cassie is interacting with other women - but all too often Fennell's script just can't help itself and strains to explain what it's doing. This level of contrast is on its fullest display when considering the Brie and Molina scenes on equal footing. Neither find their full voice, but only one feels lived in.

And then there's 15 minutes of this movie that are both impeccably acted yet morally reprehensible in a way that's, well, considerable if not defensible.

There's a dream of a movie here. It's just buried in desperate ambition, a mindstate fully understandable given the state of the reality in which it was produced.


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"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
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