Directed by Jennifer Catin Robinson, “Do Revenge” is a playful, edgy satire that feels like a ’90s teen comedy parlayed into modern glyphs (crowns, knives, fire, winking faces). Drea Torres (Camila Mendes) is a preparatory Machiavellian queen who wears plaid in her pastel colors. But the day after the aspiring scholar was crowned as one of her Vogue ideal teens, Drea, who slapped her in the face with balloons, cupcakes, and topiaries, showed off her nudes. It was ousted when the video was posted online.
Drea’s ex-boyfriend, Max (Austin Abrams), has maintained his innocence and maintains his popularity by founding an allied group called the Cis Hetero Male Champion Female Identified Students League. She didn’t buy his act. But as Robinson and Celeste Ballard wrote, in this performative modern age, Drea’s righteous anger cannot be legally unleashed without expulsion, academic and social risk.
To expose Max’s hypocrisy, Drea hires a cowardly outcast named Eleanor (Maya Hawke) in a character assassination plot riffing on mean girl icon Patricia Highsmith’s novel Strangers on a Train. Swap targets for revenge. (Highsmith is not quoted. Girls prefer Glenn Close’s angry fervor, called “Fatal Attraction,” here “Glenergy.”)
The script has an ear for young people, disguising over-the-top compliments (Eleanor refers to Drea as her “revenge mom”) and accusations of dizzying and bullying. While the tension breaks down in a disappointingly tame final act, the film would rather cast “Cruel Intentions” star Sarah Michelle Gellar as the headmaster than be cruel in itself. Think. Especially on the needle drop of the soundtrack, where Courtney Love and Le Tigre mosh alongside Olivia Rodrigo and Billie Eilish, flicking aesthetics with this generation’s ethical woes.
take revenge
Unrated. Running time: 1 hour 58 minutes. watch on netflix.