SPOILER DISCUSSION

NOTE: I am waiting for this to be released on physical media and give it a more proper sit down – there are a swath of other ideas I want to talk about but can’t for a while so keep that in mind if you want more.

1.I think this is a movie that should be shown during college orientations. Many of my friends and peers who are going to or have gone to school recently have had to do some kind of alcohol/drugs/sexual consent practicum to demonstrate to the school they’re “good”. However, we all know those things are all a lot less useful than we’d like them to. At any rate, it’s clear that the branding and messaging needs to get more personal, more inquisitive, and more pointed. The social reality behind a lot of situations need to be grounded in a context that understands the way procedures tend to work out. Promising Young Woman deftly tackles issues of consent by involving the audience in the thought process of the movie with narrative decisions, constantly referencing the theme , taking on a more absurdist take to prevent people from calling it a “message” movie (whatever that actually means) , having pointed dialogue that gets to the point and stays engaging, etc.

2. I love how the movie utilizes Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter and incorporates it within its own DNA. That also means that if you don’t want the first 35~ minutes of The Night of the Hunter to be spoiled, go to the next point. Personally, I don’t think too much is spoiled because context is missing.

The Night of the Hunter is about a corrupt preacher who kills widows and takes their valuables. The character is conniving and misogynistic, so there’s an obvious connection to the lifeblood of what this movie is about. Cassie’s family is watching it when she’s going out on her date with Ryan. The scene that plays in particular is one where the preacher is talking to God to justify his misogyny as God’s mission for him as opposed to his own decisions.

At a larger level, it shows the way misogyny operates at a kind of religious level which is something the movie hints to with Cassie’s fatalism. At the level of foreshadowing, it shows that Ryan is going to be the preacher incarnate at some point – someone who professes the good (pediatrician) while being bad(a rape apologist/enabler). In a more contextual sense, a religious man going around spreading the word of God while abusing women and children alike sounds like an allegory to what happens in many parts of the world – this is important for the way the ending plays out.

The cherry on top is the tune that plays after Cassie learns that Ryan was complicit in Nina’s incident is “Pretty Fly“. It’s a lullaby that plays when two children escape the preacher’s grasps and make way down a river. The river is almost a character of sorts that guides the children to an eventual guardian. It watches everything. Nina’s realization that Ryan is complicit is the final straw in terms of her ability to believe that there’s any “real” way for her to solve the issue. It’s why she makes a death contingency plan- she’s almost certain she’s going to die but realizes there’s no other way out for her. There’s no ability to build a foundational trust anymore. Just like the river, the Earth around her bends into the same shape due to the wide lens. It’s a feeling of disorientation that also uses its allusion in the best way.

3.More importantly The Night of the Hunter is very much a Grimm fairy tale. It’s gothic, filled with expressionistic frames, uses chiaroscuro, etc. It’s a highly stylized movie that’s also genre fluid, blending together film noir, horror, and fantasy elements to become something transcendent. While I don’t think Promising Young Woman is at the same level as Laughton’s movie , I do think that the same genre mutability and fairy tale quality comes through in the way the movie ultimately concludes and the way it’s logic proceeds from very grounded to campy to tragic to an real cinematic style of fantasy.

Also just look at this shot. Tell me this doesn’t look like it’s from a fairy tale. The dark and creepy wood filled with dangers (the men) and one promising young woman walking down the path.

4. The ending is brilliant because it technically could end before part V and be wholly consistent and tight, but the ending takes the poetic logic of the movie to its natural conclusion. The reason Cassie can’t effect the world in any meaningful way is because she has almost no agency in this world. Men, women, lawyers, headmasters, friends, peers, partners, and everyone in between help cover up the have’s and let the have not’s rot. There’s no operating outside of those bounds because everything else is cut off.

Her journal is battered from how many people she’s caught as vigilante. The idea of hundreds of people ready to violate you is brutal to imagine let alone live through. This is made all the worse by the fact that it’s the post-world reality she lives in after the death of her most beloved person in Nina. When she hears Ryan mention Al but not Nina, the whole revenge tour of the movie starts for real and her notebook takes front and center stage. This world forgets Ninas. It relegates them to the periphery forever to be lost.

This is why the meeting with the lawyer, Jordan Green (Alfred Molina) and subsequent get together with Ryan are so important. The former is her first ever experience in God knows how long where someone outside of her known entities has said Nina’s name again – a confirmation that she was in fact real. He breaks into Nina’s frame during their dialogue and cries in her. The camera is looking at her back as he talks about how he can no longer sleep and he repents. We see Cassie’s back because this is also her perspective. This is how she feels about the world. She’s broken in, restless, and feeling a huge sense of loss and responsibility.

Her decision to forgive Jordan is the reason she decides to be with Ryan. She’s found hope in the idea some change can happen because hundreds upon hundreds of incidents of no change happening had broken her down to the point where even the hope of progress was enough to give her reason to try. If Nina can exist then so can I. This is when she finally lets Ryan break into her space.

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The movie literally screams this at you showing her isolated against a frame within the frame (something the movie does quite a lot even if this is the most picturesque version of the idea) and then shows Ryan entering that frame. This is the first real time that she’s let someone in her life in a meaningful way. This is why Ryan’s betrayal is the absolute worst. The moment she lets someone in, they’re involved in the most visceral way possible. Complicity and acceptance are the name of the game. Even though he “loves” her and knows the situation took place, he’d rather play coy. His reaction on being caught is not one of guilt or remorse, but of excuses and a desire to avoid shame. Like the preacher he can’t be trusted. Like the preacher all his rules and codes and laws and norms and justifications are a farce.

In a world where nothing matters, where love is a farce, where culpability only exists in the most exceptional circumstance, where violence is constantly brushed under the rug there’s no reason to have hope. All that one can do is have a minor victory if any at all. Even death isn’t a concern because there’s a specter of it looming at all times depending on your social position. So Cassie ends up in the position of the traditional revenge hero. She’s smarter than her opponent. She’s more trained than her opponent. She’s gotten back up plans for her opponent. She’s managed to subdue her opponent.

Then the moment she goes to carve Nina’s name into Al- literally bringing that which cannot be spoken into the world so her name is on Al like his has been on her all this time -she is killed. Literally, the first time she tries to commit an act of violence – the action that any regular revenge-thriller protagonist would get away with in the second act – she is brutally murdered. Think about how peaceful she’s been given the circumstances. She’s literally giving scare lectures to rapists/assaulters. In a normal revenge movie, the protagonist would have a slew of deaths by this points- some kind of body count to show they were there even if they end up losing. However, Cassie literally has done NOTHING violent and her only act of potential violence – carving a name- is arguably far less than the situation would demand, especially given the genre conventions. Cassie dying is literally the point. It’s a concession that the world doesn’t work like that. There’s no way to win and exercise agency – at least not while alive.

When she dies, Cassie is no longer capable of being stopped. The system can’t govern her anymore as she becomes a specter that haunts it and pushes it in certain ways. The way her text messages are perfectly times to the progression of police on the scene shows how fantastical the whole situation is. It’s “cinematic” in that things are edited in a fantastical way. Things synch up as if we’re watching Cassie’s vision – a pop fantasy.

The final message she sends are “Love Cassie and Nina. ;)” She finally got to write Cassie’s name – alongside hers. In death, she got their names cemented( think about the news storm that will happen when the evidence is released, facts of the death come out, etc). It’s a bitter, melancholic truth covered up by the veneer of “winning”. In other words, a real poignant ending.

It’s the perfect way to satirize the idea that women can operate equally in a world that’s designed to benefit and shield those aligned with it – namely, men. Despite having the qualities that define success in the thriller genre and despite “morally” having done far less to deserve any meaningful violence, she’s brutally killed before even getting to carve a letter.