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| Photo by the Author |
Content warning: This article contains spoilers of the featured film as well as profanity, and mentions of nudity and drugs. Reader's discretion is advised.
“I know what it’s like to get fucked over by someone you could trust.”
Here lies the genesis of the villains’ narrative that starts the tempo for a revenge plot. But who are these “villains” and what led them to get back at their tormentors? Furthermore, how does an eye-for-an-eye narrative involve Candyland extravaganzas, teen abominations, and an overruling flair of the 90s-00s dialogue?
To start we have our antiheroine, Drea Torres (Riverdale’s Camilla Mendes), who gladly wears the title of the preppy it-girl, but is not determined by the typical “too cool for school" and "boy-ridden” personality. She’s actually a scholar who worked her way up on the social and academic hierarchy of the gaudy and private Rosehill High School. Best believe, she’ll chase the hunters down if they try to detract her from her position.
Until the said hunter was her boyfriend, Max Broussard (Austin Abrams), who deceivingly instructed our first antiheroine to send an explicit video (on our terms—nudes). It later leaks and progresses to spread like wildfire throughout the entirety of the school, turning everything and everyone against her.
The next thing we know, she meets our second antiheroine, Eleanor Levetan (Maya Hawke), who wastes no time confronting Drea about their dilemma: that their supposed nemesis also attends the same school. At that moment, they strike a deal and become buddy-buddies, using each other for their convenience and deciding to carry out each other's revenge plot, calling it “Do Revenge.”
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| Photo by the Author |
The movie may seem in your face at times. It reminds us of that one unforgettable Janis Ian quote, ”because she’s a life ruiner, she ruins people’s lives” as if it is treating us as some Cady Heron. Better yet, some of us may even conclude that this film seems to cover the typical 90s to 00s teen drama we’ve grown to love.
Frankly, it does! Best believe it, the director, Jennifer Kaytin Robinson’s, wants us to predict all these shenanigans, from the chaos of getting a makeover to lavish pool parties. The film is about teen elites spending their dollars on coke (not of the carbonated kind), while snagging on the side, and still managing to secure Ivy League entrances—like any of that was truly capable in the real world. It is designed to be that obvious, to pay homage to the likes of Strangers on the Train (1950), Heathers (1998), Clueless (1995), Scream (1996), 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), Cruel Intentions (1999), and Mean Girls (2004).
It’s a visual, narrative, and auditory choice to capture the American high school vibe. Clearly, it is supposed to be analyzed under its Barbie-like pastel exterior. Internally, it's as chaotic as Carrie, whose titular character's sadistic nature is to gain pleasure in everyone else's torment.
Similarly, its thematic elements cunningly make us spiral into indecisiveness. When Drea asks, “don’t you want to make her pay?”, the line betrays the innocence of the scene's visuals. The pastel walls and Drea's baby blue jacket hide their sinister intentions to seek retribution from those who wronged them. Likewise, the plot builds up in a way that makes you believe in a satisfying conclusion—until it doesn't. Since the film maintains a satirical brand of self-awareness, it mocks us and says, “Hey, we know we’re all bad people—but at least we’re keeping you entertained!”
In a greater sense, it is a subversive story that wheels you on a journey and makes you rethink the same old conventions of revenge narratives. Ideas that are relevant to today's Gen Z are scattered around its premise: that it-girl narcissists are nonexistent, and issues on who gets to be with who, or if the boring girl turned bombshell will still be shy will eventually become irrelevant.
Do Revenge's dark humor provides for a delectable viewing experience. Everything is a conundrum of an exposé: Drea’s evil acts for the right and wrong reasons, Eleanor's timid smirks may mean more, and Max’s captain label of Cis Hetero Men Championing Female Identifying Student League is just a disguise for the misogynist hiding underneath.
At its heart, it's a story with a message that tingles our principles: that anyone can be a pathological liar, prone to create schemes when mistreated. It just boils down to just how far one is willing to go to do revenge.
