Do Revenge Review: Payback Is for the Girls
Don’t let the candy color palette of Do Revenge fool you — this is not another feel-good Netflix YA adaptation.
Instead, the biting new comedy starring Camila Mendes and Maya Hawke is more closely a spiritual successor to high school movie classics like Heathers or Clueless. To quote Hawke’s Eleanor, teenage girls are “psychopaths,” and Do Revenge doesn’t hold back on that premise.
Eleanor and Drea (Mendes) have little in common. One is an admitted weirdo with an emotional support iguana named after Oscar-winner Olivia Colman and the other is a scholarship student turned queen bee whose leaked sex tape leads to a fall from grace.
What they do have in common is a desire for revenge. For Drea, it’s her ex-boyfriend who leaked the video and for Eleanor, it’s a girl who betrayed her trust many years ago at summer camp when she came out as a lesbian.
The chemistry between Hawke and Mendes sells the over-the-top antics as the girls seem to genuinely be enjoying themselves even though the film relies a little too heavily on time jumps to sync up with the school year.
Although it definitely needs the qualifier “dark,” the movie is a comedy and plenty entertaining. The script written by director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson and Celeste Ballard doubles as an internet-ready quote factory with jokes about Instagram witches, “revenge mommy,” and the hot headmaster (Sarah Michelle Gellar) running them over with a Tesla.
Underneath all the slang and memes in the dialogue is some real emotion about what it’s like to try to survive just being yourself.
Although they justify their actions, Drea and Eleanor slowly start to lose grip on how far they’re willing to go to “do revenge.” What starts as a somewhat straightforward revenge plot snowballs into something more for both girls.
Drea may be after her ex but the movie shows more than once it’s friends who have the most power to break your heart.
Drea is sympathetic as a young woman of color who has to work much harder than her trust-fund peers to be successful. Mendes plays her as just bitchy enough that the movie keeps an edge and you’re never quite sure whether you really like Drea.
Drea: Sometimes it just hurts to exist, you know?
Admittedly Drea uses those around her, and her thoughtlessness comes back to bite her eventually.
Hawke is a charming weirdo as Eleanor and brings a necessary vulnerability to the role to balance out Drea’s survivalist hard edge. However, it’s not until after the film’s “Hitchcockian” twist that she really gets to light up and embrace the excess of her character.
To say much more would spoil a delicious turn but a dramatic outfit change is involved.
Both characters play on your sympathies as you teeter between feeling bad for them and remembering that teenage girls actually do have the capacity to be psychopaths. Anyone who’s been a teenage girl knows that sentiment is made more as an objective observation than a moral judgment.
When the systems you operate in are stacked against you, whether it’s because you’re a teenage girl or otherwise, how can you not want to let out a primal scream every now and then?
That’s why despite the honestly deplorable things the duo gets up to you can’t help but root for them for being “fucked up soulmates.”
Although the movie belongs to Hawke and Mendes, a high school movie needs its love interests. Rish Shah, most recently seen as the heartthrob of Ms. Marvel, and Talia Ryder are charming enough to fill the roles of the girls’ respective love interests Russ and Gabbi. Unfortunately, they don’t get too much to do other than reflect the girls back on themselves.
Austin Abrams, who seems to bounce back and forth between genuine manic pixie dream boy roles and dirtbag boyfriends (This Is Us), is well cast as Drea’s fake good guy ex Max. Max plays a pivotal role in the film’s conclusion.
The aesthetic of Do Revenge is much less timeless than the plot, with the wardrobes looking more like a Gen Z Halloween costume than something a current high schooler would wear. The movie never claims to be subtle, so it makes sense the costuming takes a similarly maximalist approach.
An excellent soundtrack also keeps the movie bouncing along with a perfect blend of feminist staples, high school movie classics, and modern queer pop. Could Eleanor’s romantic scene with Gabbi have been scored with anything other than “Silk Chiffon” by MUNA?
Overall, Do Revenge is a fun dark comedy with an interesting enough plot and stand-out performances that should allow it to have a shelf life longer than its fashion.
In a different time a movie like Do Revenge would seem destined for cult classic status. Instead, with a streaming debut and lead actresses with built-in fanbases hopefully, the film finds a well-deserved larger audience.
What did you think of Do Revenge? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Do Revenge is streaming now on Netflix.
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Breeze Riley
Breeze Riley is a pop culture enthusiast who decided to turn her love of watching too much TV into a hobby writing about it. Although she's a convention-going sci-fi and fantasy nerd, she's just as likely to be watching an off-beat comedy or period drama. She is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic.