An acid-bright Mean Girls for the online generation, Netflix’s teen black comedy treads an uncomfortable line. This is Do Revenge.
A glossy Insta-ready production from a director who cut her teeth on MTV, Do Revenge revels in glitzy, best-life set pieces and fierce costume design that feels current and makes its characters visually distinct. Though the trailer’s light on meme-worthy, quotable one-liners, this Netflix original film makes the point (again) that the corrosive power struggles beneath the ivy-clad surfaces of elite education are eternal. It also delves into very real fears for women and girls whose lives are largely lived through screens: revenge porn, bullying of an insidiousness unknown to our parents and the misery of never measuring up to someone else’s (or one’s own) highlight reel.
Do Revenge, starring…
Staring Maya Hawke (yes, that one) and Camilla Mendes as unlikely allies across the high school hierarchy, Do Revenge follows Drea, a preening influencer (Mendes) and Eleanor, and awkward transfer student (Hawke). While Drea’s the target of a smear campaign by her fake-woke misogynist ex after he leaks a private photo of her, Eleanor finds herself a victim of homophobic rumour. Early in their friendship the girls agree to exact revenge on each other’s tormentors, in order to avoid suspicion.
While one could, if of a cynical bent, detect the whiff of Hollywood nepotism in Do Revenge’s casting, Hawke and Mendes make charismatic leads: Hawke brings a deadpan, off-kilter quirkiness to her character that’s quietly appealing. Per long and storied tradition in high school movies, both actors are plainly too mature and clear of complexion to play teenagers convincingly, but this adds to a sense of heightened reality that could work well for Do Revenge. It successfully occupies the same psychological space as it’s ‘murder exchange’ plot inspiration, Hitchcock’s Strangers On A Train.
Do Revenge, which drops on September 16th, is both update and riposte to its influences: unlike Mean Girls and much of Patricia Highsmith’s fiction (including that adapted for Strangers on a Train), it appears to bring the noted, much analysed queer subtext of its influences and make them the text (though how much of this informs the characters and relationships in any meaningful way remains to be seen), with trailers teasing on-screen same-sex pairings.
Coming from writer-director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, herself fresh from a Marvel studios co-write on what’s arguably the funniest comic book property of the last decade (Thor: Love and Thunder alongside Taika Waititi), viewers might reasonably expect some genre-puncturing fun, a little wit at the expense of the teen-drama archetypes, making Do Revenge worth a look for those whose high school years are in the rear-view.