When
I went to see Promising Young Woman in theaters on
New Year's Eve 2020, I had my expectations firmly in place: Like many
others, I thought I was paying money to go see Carey Mulligan butcher
the hell out of a lot of men and craft a new entry in the rape-revenge subgenre while doing so. I also
had been delivered the fresh news that the ending was allegedly controversial. Something that led me to make two specific predictions for the film's finale: Either it would be
revealed that there was no rape to speak of, and this was going to be revenge based on lies, or that I was going
to be witnessing Mulligan giving her on-screen love interest Bo
Burnham an on-camera castration. Those seemed on pare for a
potentially controversial conclusion since you just know a
certain crowd would use a false rape allegation or a potential
Burnham dick clipping as ammo to claim the film was an attack on "all
men" (RE: straight white cismen). Something in the vein of the
overblown reaction to Sophia Takal's 2019 remake of Black
Christmas. I thought I knew what I was getting into when I viewed
it.
Instead, it ended up being nothing like what I expected: It ended up being something far more special, something that has stuck inside my mind for the last four months, and that has become one of my new favorite films.
And it all started with a look into a camera.
