Okay so major TW for violence against women but I need to talk about why nobody should see #PromisingYoungWoman

Spoilers because this film needs to be exposed

I saw the film last night as part of #Sundance2020
I was really excited by the premise in the trailers: Carey Mulligan pretends to be drunk to go home with guys so that she can catch them at the exact moment they’re about to assault her. It seemed like a powerful revenge plot.

Throughout the movie we learn that her revenge is on behalf of her life long time best friend who was assaulted in med school and killed herself.

As part of the revenge Carey Mulligan gets their former best friend (Alison Brie) drunk and puts her in a position believe that she might have been assaulted. Not a great look for a feminists film, but not the worst look either.

Later she attends a meeting with the dean of the med school she had attended. This is the dean that they reported the assault to. The dean doesn’t remember. Carey Mulligan tells her that she’s taken her daughter to that very same dorm room to meet the guys who live there.

In reality she’s taken her to a diner and left her there. But strike 2 of threatening violence against women as fun revenge. At this point I was very upset and uncomfortable. However I thought the movie might redeem itself, though I wasn’t sure how.

Through a turn of events Carey Mulligan finds out where her friends rapist is having his bachelor party and decides to enact the last steps of her revenge plot. She gets the rapist alone and is about to carve her friend (the victim)‘s name into his body.

This is where that TW comes in
I know what you’re thinking: they wouldn’t show that kind of bodily mutiliation in this kind of film right??? Don’t worry they don’t. Instead they have him break free of his restraints and then spend the next two minutes with him suffocating her.

TW
That’s right, they’ve shown men just about to sexually assault this woman and then they have the man murder the woman. AND BURN HER BODY. At this point I was about ready to just leave, but the movie was almost over so I thought it wouldn’t be too horrible to stay to the end.

But it got worse: at the wedding of the rapist/murderer Carey Mulligan’s love interest Bo Burnham receives scheduled texts from her saying that it is finally the end as we see a letter she had sent to a lawyer in the event of her disappearance and the rapist/murderer is arrested.

So her death was the final step in her revenge plot. So in the minds of the film makers the death of a woman is just a plot device to punish a man.

I literally had a panic attack in the theatre after the film was over. Make no mistake this movie is for cisgender heterosexual men. Everyone else knows how common violence at the hands of cis-straight-men is. Nobody who’s experienced that kind of violence is surprised by the end

I am disgusted at the idea that a movie that was supposed to I guess empower victims really implied that the most powerful thing that woman could have done is died. It makes me sick. It’s triggering. The film is garbage and when it has it’s wide release I beg you not to see it.

Victims and people who’s lives have been affected by sexual assailants deserve so much better than this film.