Promising Young Woman

I think Promising Young Woman does exactly what it sets out to do. It’s a mainstream film about sexual assault and the quiet horror of already-hurt young women get ground down by an indifferent legal system. And because it’s mainstream—because it wants reach, volume, wants to smuggle its message past the usual walls—it has to play nice. Pretty up some things, hide others, imply, gesture, soften. I understand why. I respect the hustle. But that’s also where it starts to feel like propaganda. Not because it’s wrong, but because it trims itself into something palatable enough to circulate. You can feel the version the writer and director could have made—the bleak psychological study about rape, complicity, and the moral cowardice that hides behind “innocent until proven guilty.” The one only a handful of critics would ever watch, and then congratulate themselves for finding, for keeping an ear to the ground. So yes: it’s good at what it is. I agree we as a society need more (Jesus Christ) anti-rape propaganda, and if so, I want the propaganda to be well made. I just don’t particularly like seeing it. I’d have loved this film as a short story, or a collection—something sharper, stranger, less beholden to digestibility. I do like the ending, though. The whole “female rage” trope can die in a fire. At least this film has the guts to show what actually happens to women who don’t stack the odds in their favour well enough when they try to play the violence game.