Promising Young Woman (2020)'s comments

The film undermines its own points with an ending that delivers one last twist of the knife to unconvincing effect. When Cassandra gets her revenge from beyond the grave, it felt like a hollow victory. Two women are dead - the film bizarrely undercuts that tragedy by literally ending with a winky emoji. When Cassandra's killed, it's a shocking moment where it seems as if these men will once again avoid repercussions - that's a bold, provocative idea. But it resorts to a more clichéd revenge ending that feels lazy despite its odd setup.

the first Cassandra drops her act; the dance scene; the squirmy scene in the Dean's office.

My personal initial feeling at least was that using the police as the savior in the end could be seen as a “cop out”, as the “just hierarchies and power structures of our society”, knights on white horses in service of our great and just society coming in to save the day, and perhaps in a situation where some magical “rape culture” was to blame which needed to be slain by heroic men on white horses, it perhaps could be the case, but to me it does seem to lessen the probable depth of the situation.

I don’t know if it is appropriate to bring this into it, but from my own observations, it would seem, that yes, probably it usually is some men coming to the rescue of women from these abusive social structures, usually probably young men, idealistic, with determination and new technologies (social networks and apps) saving abused women from the movie and music industry or the “club scene”, but probably naive about how they would soon start building and using similar structures themselves for getting as much sex from as many women as they could for as little commitment or cost (having to learn their names? Ugh) as possible.

It was a really good movie in a lot of aspects, but I think it ended up choosing to be more shallow than it had built up promise for by then. As a genre film more soothing ending probably, making someone ready for a nice episode of television where cancer was cured, the issue of racism was solved by the police or the military, or something and everyone could be happy about their society. As I said, it is definitely debatable. As a message of hope to someone who could find themselves in unjust situations, perhaps good, but to actually trigger someone to emotionally process the complexity of the issue, the depth of it, to grow themselves, it kinda seems like a more childish choice. A case of different perspective perhaps. Many people seem to think keeping young women naive and hopeful in regards to entering clubs and other such social constructs that probably at the heart are market places where powerful men can exchange their status for cheap sex, is a good choice, and we shouldn’t traumatize people with the probable depth of this, shouldn’t destroy the hopes of young girls who are about to venture to these entrances to sex dungeons, so that sex trafficking could go on, but perhaps there are valid arguments for keeping girls naive and hopeful about “partying” as well, I don’t know.