Do Revenge has certain advantages over Honor Society: it’s clearly a much bigger-budget movie released to a far more successful platform (Netflix), and featuring in addition to its’ leads, a supporting cast with a fair amount of experience and credentials -it can afford to stick Sophie Turner in as a cameo. That general polish fits with what it’s emulating though, as where Honor Society is a John Hughes movie, Do Revenge is a cynical 90s teen flick, with of course a touch of Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train to inform the premise. Its’ models are the like of Jawbreaker and Cruel Intentions (fittingly with Sarah Michelle Gellar making a small appearance as the school principal), with additional mites of straighter teen comedies like Mean Girls -which I’ve already heard this movie compared to. It’s more upfront by design -being about revenge after all, emotions run high.
It centres on the unlikely partnership of two girls at an elite Miami school: popular, malicious social queen Drea (Camilla Mendes) and dejected, solitary new girl Eleanor (Maya Hawke). Drea’s boyfriend Max (Austin Abrams) at the end of junior year releases a sexually explicit video of her to the school, while Eleanor is still reeling from a years’ old rumour that she had forcibly kissed a classmate, outing her and branding her a predator. Learning these stories, the two team up to take revenge on each others’ persecutor.
Writer-director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson has a very strong grasp on the voices of these characters, on their peers, and consequent comic sensibility. Where other movies might try to mimic what they think the kids these days are like, Do Revenge makes clear it is more of a vague impression to suit the needs of the story. High schoolers in the 2020s don’t really talk or act like they do here, but its’ close and distant enough in the right ways while utilizing tropes of high school that just don’t seem to age. It has this in common with Mean Girls, especially where its’ antagonists are concerned. Max is shallow and phony to a heightened degree, but rooted in things viscerally in touch with the youth of today. The film whitewashes its’ characters a little bit as to their attitudes and social politics, but not to the extent it feels laughably dishonest, as in something like Crush.
I think a part of this has to do with the cynical edge to the plot, which is driven by acts and motivations of cruelty or maliciousness. Drea admires Eleanor’s passion to “destroy” her target Carissa (Ava Capri), and she herself is willing to go pretty far in her vengeance on Max. There’s a tenseness to the stakes that most high school movies can’t quite achieve, the venom behind each motivation is felt. But the movie isn’t a downer for this, nor is it caked in vitriol, because it complements those sensations with light yet precise humour and ample character that lends a touch of warmth. The comedy, in both dialogue and plotting, is fairly inventive, and the tone of the whole piece is suitably sardonic -again reflecting it’s 90s influences through a series of fun needle-drops like “Kids in America”, “How Bizarre”, “Bitch”, and “Flagpole Sitta”. It’s more coolly comic than outrageous, but I like that this too is undercut -funny instances of Drea dismissing Eleanor’s ideas or references do come back with a serious bent. And of course the movie takes very seriously the circumstances that motivate both girls’ revenge -Drea especially, whose lasting wounds are made palpable in Mendes’ performance.
She and Hawke are great together, playing their characters at contrasting levels of personality but finding a strong symphony wherever needed. They each get several moments to shine in their independent plot threads as well, which both give them opportunities to explore their characters’ sense of selves and provide them with new love interests. Drea is humbled as she hits it off with down-to-earth student Russ (Rish Shah), but the more fascinating stuff comes out of Eleanor’s dalliances with the popular kids, whom she finds are not so shallow or mean-spirited as she had believed, forming attachments to them and significantly the stylish and most 90s of these 90s-inspired characters Gabby -played by a scene-stealing Talia Ryder. There’s something very raw about Eleanor’s sudden feelings of validation within this group, even to an irresponsible point of doubting the malignance of Max’s crime. Hawke exudes that desperation of a girl with a lot of pent-up anger, sadness, and longing for acceptance, to have those assuaged even at the cost of some moral compromise.
And in tandem with that, but without going into specifics is the twist that Do Revenge plays, again not so dissimilar to the one of Honor Society, which pulls the rug out on the context we were watching these girls’ machinations and their burgeoning relationship in. It’s kind of a thrill, if only because its’ played so well in direction and acting, though I don’t think it works quite as effectively for the narrative, much as it brings new layers to Eleanor and Drea’s relationship. Because this twist changes the dynamic but not so much the characters –whose actions and emotions remain pretty consistent and on the right track so as to keep them likeable through to the end. There’s not a sense of permanence to it, so it carries a minimal weight. It’s also surrounded by enough schemes and cynicism that it doesn’t stand out the way the big reveal of Honor Society does.
However, Do Revenge probably has the more satisfying climax succeeding this, set at an excessively bourgeois Admissions Party for students who have been accepted into an Ivy League school. Revenge is done. It’s not a terribly surprisingly constructed finale, both for the plot and character arcs, but Robinson illustrates it with enough flare in both script and design that feels earned given the hysterics that led up to it. A great culmination of the films’ biting ingenuity, and it gives Abrams his best, spiteful material, an actor who was already doing well as a complete shithead.
Generally, the movie walks its’ tightrope well, balancing a very severe, irony-infused take on high school politics with an honest and optimistic tenderness as to the importance of peer support. While no one would call Do Revenge an authentic portrait, it is a living and sincere one –and one that Robinson and her cast has a lot of fun with. Of the two movies I’ve reviewed today, it’s clearly the slicker one, the one that pulls less punches, but it’s not so vicious as it might be –certainly next to some of the movies it emulates. And I think that works in its’ favour, much as the critical dose of wry misanthropy in Honor Society is an asset to that movie. They compliment each other, as I stated before; differing yet curiously similar perspectives on high school deviousness and coming-of-age.
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