Review of Promising Young Woman (2020) by Tonto — 15 Sep 2021

This was a film that was very culturally relevant, with the "Me too" movement having just taken precedence to its release. In it we have our protagonist, a young woman aged 30 who works at a coffee shop and still lives at home with her parents.

She goes out to dive bars and clubs on the weekends and goes home with men and seduces them while pretending to be inebriated only to reveal she is not really intoxicated when they try to take advantage of her.

This typically has the affect of freaking out the male she is with. This aspect of the film I was a little critical of, as she is putting herself in danger always going home with strange men from bars and pretending to be f****d up.

The guy could still be an actual threat and still attack her even after she reveals she is sober. Anyway, she does this to take vengeance on the male gender for the time her friend was date-raped after a party in college and committed suicide when her case wasn't taken seriously.

She also takes vengeance some women who did not help her friend who was sexually assaulted and tricks them into thinking they were molested or their loved ones were molested. She also meets a guy she went to medical school with before dropping out due to her traumatic experience having the friend that committed suicide due to being raped and things go pretty well between them at first as they start dating.

I found it a little strange how this woman who clearly didn't trust men and had issues with men was willing to date some guy just because he seemed like a good guy and I guess she was attracted to him.

Anyway, she discovers he was actually present during the sexual assault of her friend and just stood by bemused by it. She is devastated and breaks up with him. She then goes on to pretend to be a stripper at the bachelor party for the man who raped her friend in college as he is now engaged.

She gets him alone in a bedroom and ties him up, revealing who she truly is and attempts to attack him, carving her friends name on his back. He gets free and strangles her to death. However, in the end he doesn't get away with it as a cop she previously met who was sympathetic to her story found out about the murder and has him arrested in the end.

I thought the movie was sometimes pretty tense, and for the most part it landed emotionally. However, the main character seemed too vindictive and I thought it was a little unfair how the movie implied that almost without fail every man from the parties/bars wanted to take advantage of her when she seemed impaired.

It was also a little unrealistic how she would continue getting away with her deception.