Do Revenge

Image credit: Traileraddict

Right now I’m thinking of a scene in Black Books; where Manny the optimist and seemingly sane one of the dysfunctional trio, is trying to convince the others that they should all go out because, “it’s friiiday night”, while Bernard the drunken cynic complains that that won't change next week or the week after and the whole cycle will continue until they all die. For many, Friday is a night to look forward to: it’s the end of the week, there are two whole days of freedom, socialising, and relaxing to look forward to before Monday rocks round again. Having a career background in retail for most of my life, I understood the concept of a weekend, but I never really had one. I’ve only recently changed career paths and entered the corporate world, and I now get the hype. However, while I definitely feel that Friday night is a night to be social and spend with friends and lovers, you definitely don’t have to go out to have a lovely time. This evening I had one of my best friends around for dinner and a trashy movie, and it was delightful.

The film we did is on Netflix and is called Do Revenge. It tells the story of a popular and perfect high school senior named Drea (Camilla Mendes) whose life is ruined when her boyfriend leaks an intimate video of her. With her friends against her and her college prospects in tatters, Drea is uncertain if she can even show her face for senior year. That is until she meets Eleanor (Maya Hawke), a shy and disheveled new student who has suffered high school trauma similar to hers. The two form an unlikely friendship, which quickly turns into a macabre partnership as they come up with a plan to get away with the perfect revenge: swap targets.

This movie is Strangers on a Train meets Clueless meets Mean Girls. It’s a bright and colourful high school comedy on the surface. What lies beneath is a twisted exploration into the psychological trauma of the high school experience, primarily the toxicity of financial privilege, masculinity, racism, and clique culture.

While the movie feels like every other high school flick you’ve ever seen, where it sparkles is in the incredible adult performances of the central cast. It’s a film that definitely aims to be character-driven and both Mendes and Hawke give really memorable performances as this unlikely duo that turn out to be increasingly unstable. The cleverness is really that you’re not sure who is even the real victim, as several plot twists -admittedly all crammed in within the last fifteen minutes- quickly shatter everything you thought you’d had worked out. It’s no Hitchcock by any means, but it does take a leaf out of his books and manipulates its audiences – in a rather ironic and even metafictive way- into trying to reach the ending before the characters do. But, in an interesting narrative choice, it ends on an uplifting and positive vibe to counteract all the empathetic mortification that makes up most of its cinematic experience. This is also achieved through the fact that it’s hard to actually label who the bad guys are -aside from one of the three men that make up the cast, who we all want to punch in the face from reel one.

Image credit: Disappointmentmedia

None of this is groundbreaking or new, but I definitely did appreciate what this movie was trying to do. And it wasn’t trying to take itself too seriously either, in fact the comedy reminded me of the TV series Hacks, which is similarly filled with characters who are ghastly people, but you still suffer their discomfort, shame, and mortification through these clever, empathetic tricks that the camera, director, and cast pull on you. If you want a fun movie for a Friday night in with pizza and a friend, Do Revenge.

Director: Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, 2022

Cast: Camilla Mendes, Maya Hawke, Austin Abrams, Rish Shah, Taila Ryder, Alisha Boe, Ava Capri, J.D., Paris Berelc, Maia Reficco, Sophie Turner & Sarah Michelle Geller