Review of Promising Young Woman (2020) by Moviemitch96 — 26 Dec 2020

This revenge thriller sees Carey Mulligan as the titular young woman of this film, a vigilante who goes around feigning drunkenness at nightclubs in order to trick men into trying to sexually assault and have their way with her as retribution for a past crime committed against her and a friend.

Oh boy... Where to even begin with this one. I had very conflicting feelings going into this one. Part of me thought it did look in fact very promising and clever, while the other part of me thought that it looked like a far-fetched and preachy statement on behalf of the 'Me Too' movement.

And unfortunately, this film without a doubt turned out to be the latter for me, but it didn't even prepare me for how much worse this film turned out to be in the final quarter or so. Not only did it squander and seemingly only scrape the surface of its premise and potential, it simply missed the opportunity to make a clever statement on the 'Me Too' movement as a whole, with the exception of only a couple of clever scenes and dialogue in my opinion.

And then we come to the final quarter or so of the film, which starts to forget about the whole point of the film (justice for wronged women) and instead begins to dive into sadism before attempting to deliver quite possibly one of the most far-fetched and absurd punchlines I've ever seen in a film, so much so that by the time it arrives, it was far too late for the film to be redeemed in any way for me.

I just could not suspend my disbelief for the life of me. Literally the only redeeming quality of this film is Carey Mulligan's career-best performance on display here. She doesn't hold back at all and is as fierce and as memorable as she'll probably ever be.

Otherwise, this film was overall not only a major misfire and missed opportunity to make a much more focused, clever and on-point statement on sexual misconduct and the 'Me Too' movement, but it's quite simply the worst film of 2020 for me.

There's just no other way around it.