Promising Young Woman ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Promising Young Woman – R – 1 hr 53 min
NO SPOILERS Movie Review
Watched in theater Thursday February 4, 2021
Century 16 Sante Fe Casino Station Las Vegas, Nevada
1st new movie seen in theater in 2021

Cassie (Carey Mulligan), a promising med student, drops out of school after the death of her friend and fellow student Nina. Cassie was traumatized by the sexual assault of Nina at a party with a bunch of students and plans to seek a very unique and unusual revenge to everybody who didn’t do anything.

Fogell/Mclovin(!) from Superbad (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) doing cocaine lines and trying to put the move on Cassie was strange, awkward and creepy — precisely the mood the scene was looking for. The entire movie is built from scenes like these, cleverly placing Cassie intentionally in compromising situations where she acts drunk and able to be preyed upon or is confronting those who stood by or actively participated in Nina’s assault.

The screenplay and Carey Mulligan’s performance are both outstanding. Mulligan milks every scene for the ick factor. We want her to enact a special type of revenge — and you have to watch the movie to understand what that is and how it works, because I don’t want to spoil it here. It’s an unconventional, fresh exploration of date rape, primarily from the victim’s perspective, which I found very refreshing, albeit uncomfortable plenty of times, to watch.

Didn’t expect this movie to be this strong, but it was one of the best new movies to come out in 2020, even though it was released at the end of the year. Kara, however, didn’t feel as strongly. You’ll have to watch the video below for more details on how she felt.

Also, it’s the first “leaving the movie theater review” that we weren’t able to record when we left the theater. Long story short, the theater was located inside the casino and we stuck around afterwards for quite some time at the casino, not allowing us to record the “just left theater” experience. We recorded our feelings two days later on Saturday.

Promising Young Woman is showing in scattered open theaters throughout the United States right now as well as on VOD (although we would say wait for the rental to go down to the $5-7 price. It was the first movie we watched in a theater in 2021, at the Sante Fe Station Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Hoping more movie watching theater experiences are like this in 2021. Off to a good start. Kara doesn’t recommend this, but I do.

Rating (out of 5 stars): ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (Todd) ⭐️⭐️ (Kara)