Promising Young Woman

Flicks, Katie Parker

In a post-#MeToo world, it would have been easy for first time director (and season 2 Killing Eve showrunner) Emerald Fennell to consider this quite enough for audiences to chew over. Permeated with an uncomfortably cute, candy coloured aesthetic and soundtracked with a droll collection of bubblegum pop, Promising Young Woman initially plays Cassie’s vigilante escapades for pitch black comedy: cathartic, yes, groundbreaking, no.

But Fennell has something much deeper, and darker, in mind for Cassie’s journey, and a very specific destination to which all this is leading—one that may be as divisive as it is distressing, and which, ideally, should remain as unspoiled as possible before viewing.

Stuff

In just the first week, 2021 has delivered us one of the movies of the year.

New Zealand Herald

A powerful, incendiary and scarily pertinent film that refuses to provide easy answers.

The Times

This is the Mulligan show, though, and she proves every bit at home with humour as she is with serious drama.

Vanity Fair

Written and directed by Killing Eve showrunner Emerald Fennell, Promising Young Woman is not always surefooted in its style or substance, but Mulligan is consistently riveting throughout.

RogerEbert.com

Promising Young Woman is as confident as its protagonist, a film that's willing to be a little messy and inconsistent.

Vulture

Fennell's film is a vibrant, stylistically precise piece of work, but the sentiments it conveys don't feel examined. It's an acceleration off a cliff when what you'd really like to see is some kind of road forward, no matter how rough.

The Guardian

The film around her has its flaws but [Mulligan has] never been better, fulfilling her initial promise as a young actor and then some.

Collider

Emerald Fennell's debut feature is so razor sharp you'll have to check yourself for wounds.

Hollywood Reporter

Fennell's film could be called a polemic, but dramatically it's so sharply and boldly laid out that its narrative shocks rule the day. It's jolting to witness how it refuses to let anyone off the hook.