Promising Young Woman: If you like that sort of thing

TW: rape, rape culture

I saw this movie a while ago but just didn’t feel good about watching it. In fact, I’ve warned some friends away from watching it, knowing their histories of being raped or sexually assaulted. After watching Promising Young Woman, I felt empty. There’s nothing to cheer about, even at the end.

This one surprised me–when you hear a female-directed revenge horror movie, you scream “YES!” and pre-buy on Vudu.

I’m all for women-powered revenge movies. Taking back the narrative. But as with all of the posts that are published on this blog, this is my opinion as a movie watcher. And I watch movies to get away from real life; I don’t want to relive it in any fashion, unless it’s a crime doc, and that I’m choosing to dive into.

It’s hard to get past WTF she’s doing at the beginning. And you wonder how far the director will take those particular “almost rape” scenes.

Once her reasoning is brought to light, you start to cheer! But then, you realize she’s taking it too far. And when she shows up as a stripper to take revenge on the one who hurt her friend, SHE FUCKING DIES. No, you didn’t. You didn’t!!!!!!

It goes downhill from there. One finally gets caught, but it’s for her murder. And then you find out every man she knows has been complicit.

Credits role, and I (1) didn’t see that coming and (2) have a bad taste in my mouth. I wanted the men them to die (this IS a horror movie), I didn’t need her to be sacrificed in order for revenge to be exacted.

That may well be the point – that inevitably, it takes a dead woman to get a man accused of something…anything.

Rather than use movie-magic, the director makes the ending real. That’s the true horror.

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This is a great article from the The Independent that outlines the history of women filmmakers who have “taken back the narrative” of revenge movies.

I can completely understand where these women filmmakers are coming from, but there’s always been enough trauma in my own life, I escape to monsters and the supernatural to forget about it. And while I’ve steered friends away from watching it, there’s one group I’d love to see take it all in…