Promising Young Woman review

I was finally able to get back into a theater after 2 months, and my first movie back was one I had been really looking forward to for a full year.

Promising Young Woman is about Carey Mulligan playing a woman who we first see play acting drunk at clubs in order to lure predatory men. For what purpose? Is she just making a statement? Is she a serial killer? The movie never makes it explicitly clear.

There's a past trauma that is fueling whatever it is she does. But when she isn't doing this stuff she lives a quiet, mundane life, living at home with her parents and working at a coffee shop. She even has a romance with an old classmate.

On its surface this is a revenge film, but I've never seen one quite like this. The film makes no secret that it sees the Mulligan character as deeply disturbed and damaged, even though she is the character we side with.

The movie stays mostly in a darkly comic zone. Then there is a twist maybe 2/3 of the way through that completely alters what we think of a key character, and this sends the film off into a really dark final act. I did not totally love the way the film ends, but it's damn interesting.

Mulligan is sensational. I've been a huge fan since she debuted, but she's done mostly period movies. Some I've liked, and she's done a few good contemporary films too, but this is her peak so far. Whenever they have the Oscars she needs to be winning one.