Movie: Promising Young Woman

"Promising Young Woman" promised to be a dark rape revenge story, the kind we can all cheer for. It was more complicated than that.

Our hero follows the classic Batman/vigilante arc: an early wound festers and leads to a life of crime fighting. She pretends to be drunk, lures men into taking her home, and then ... does something. The film makes it clear that some of the men get a black mark in her book, and we see these men getting let off with a warning. Others get a red mark, and the film leaves what happens to them up to our imagination. We see blood on her costume following one of those incidents. So not straight-up Batman.

She also seeks out the men directly connected to and responsible for her wound to dole out special vengeance.

She's turning 30, but she's emotionally stunted. She's living like she did when the bad thing happened, at home with her parents, in her pink bedroom, working at a coffee shop.

A man comes into her life and he's wonderful. He's patient and kind and we know he would make great dad because he's played by the guy that made "Eighth Grade", and he dances in the pharmacy aisle to a Paris Hilton song. It looks like he's the key to her healing and then BAM he is NOT the key to her healing. She does not heal. A man will not fix this.

This movie does not give us what we want. I loved that.