Promising Young Woman is an incendiary thriller from first-time director Emerald Fennell, but what does the movie’s ending mean? Starring Carey Mulligan as Cassie, a troubled heroine whose life is forever altered by her friend’s horrific assault, Promising Young Woman is a blackly comic drama that rewrites the formula of rape/revenge movies.
Beloved by critics, Promising Young Woman balances a tricky tonal tightrope act of injecting jet-black humor into a deathly serious story of rape, revenge, and justice. Despite its sharp and tastefully-handled wit, Promising Young Woman is a heavy film that addresses numerous difficult subjects such as date rape and sexual assault, and some readers may prefer to avoid reading further as these themes are discussed in detail throughout this article.
The directorial debut of former Killing Eve showrunner Emerald Fennel, Promising Young Woman is a blackly comic psychological thriller that tells the story of Cassie, the titular promising young woman whose life is derailed by the rape and subsequent suicide of her best friend Nina while in medical school. Traumatized, Cassie takes it upon herself to avenge Nina’s death by regularly pretending to be intoxicated, allowing predatory men (including cameo-ing Ready Or Not star Adam Brody) to take her back to their homes to take advantage of her, and then threatening to blackmail them if they don’t change their ways. However, this routine of justice-seeking is interrupted by her flourishing relationship with former classmate Ryan and the news that Nina’s rapist Al has returned to the US and is soon to be married.
After a brief, cute courtship with Bo Burnham’s Ryan appears to have improved Cassie’s bleak outlook on life, Mulligan’s heroine is dealt a crushing blow from former classmate Madison. Alison Brie’s repentant character shows Cassie a video of Nina’s assault which proves that Ryan was present (and possibly recording) the rape and did nothing to intervene. Devastated and even more righteously angry than ever before, Cassie confronts Ryan and demands the location of Al’s upcoming bachelor party. That's when things take a turn in a twist reminiscent of the pitch-black comedy Very Bad Things. Learning that the party will take place in a remote cabin, Cassie poses as a stripper and handcuffs Al to a bed, planning to mutilate him. However, Al breaks free and gains the upper hand, suffocating Cassie to death in Promising Young Woman’s most shocking moment.
Despite her early exit, by the time Promising Young Woman reaches its climax Cassie most definitely secures vengeance on Al, Ryan, and company, ensuring that the entire gang of wealthy collegiates is brought to justice. It comes at the cost of her life, as Cassie sacrifices herself to prove their guilt. It is for her murder that Al is arrested in the movie’s closing moments, and although his best man Joe (played with sleazy zeal by Max Greenfield) may bolt at the sight of police cars, it’s unlikely he’ll evade capture given the seriousness of the charges.
Alfred Molina’s lawyer Jordan, who Cassie confronted earlier in the movie for defending the guilty parties, is given a shot at redemption when Cassie entrusts him with evidence key to proving Al’s guilt in Nina’s rape (and presumably the complicity of Ryan, Joe, et al). As the distraught lawyer has proven himself genuinely repentant for his involvement in the trial, Cassie sends him evidence of where she plans to be during Al’s bachelor party, and his call to the police leads to a search that soon uncovers her remains, burned by Al and Joe, and leads to their arrest. He’s the lone primary male cast member of Promising Young Woman to be part of Cassie’s revenge plot, and his part can be read as a metaphorical embodiment of men who assist women in attempting to overthrow toxic cultures embodied by Joe, Al, and their friends.
Ryan, however, comes to represent an uglier side of modern masculinity, presenting himself as a sweet and sensitive guy throughout his and Cassie’s courtship only to be revealed as a monster by the movie’s end. He seems marginally more repentant about his actions than his former classmates, but he nonetheless attends Al’s wedding and converses with the repugnant Joe, proving that his distaste for toxic masculinity is superficial and he doesn’t care about the women whose lives he and his friends have destroyed. As a result, although much of the wedding party is implied to receive scheduled texts featuring a video of Al raping Nina, it is Ryan who is seen reading these onscreen, and Promising Young Woman makes it clear that he opted to side with his classmates over Cassie and is now paying the price.
Throughout Promising Young Woman, Cassie is never seen without her gold necklace, a broken heart design that features her name. In the closing moments of the movie, her co-worker finds the other half of this necklace, adorned with the name “Nina,” in an envelope Cassie left in her workplace before her final fatal mission. It’s left ambiguous whether Nina and Cassie’s relationship was more than platonic, but a match cut that moves from the half of the necklace to Cassie’s half (found by a sniffer dog amongst her otherwise incinerated remains) implies that the pair are finally reunited in death after years of Cassie struggling to move on without Nina. This point is reinforced by a scheduled text Ryan receives from Cassie as he attends Al’s wedding, the last image seen onscreen in Promising Young Woman, which is signed “Love, Cassie and Nina.”
There’s a hoary old cliche about revenge that says “those who seek revenge should dig two graves (one for their enemy and one for themselves)”. However, Promising Young Woman’s outlook on righteous vengeance skews closer to the wisdom of rapper Pusha-T, who claimed on his legendary Drake diss track 'The Story of Adidon' “if we all go to Hell, it’ll be worth it.” Cassie’s vengeance may come at the cost of her life, but Promising Young Woman offers a daring riposte to anyone who thinks that its heroine should have let Nina’s assault go unpunished. Although Cassie is murdered, she takes down the men who ruined her and Nina’s lives, guaranteeing them prison time and ruined reputations, and although her life is ended, the Carey Mulligan movie makes it clear that its heroine had already devoted her existence post-Nina’s death to teaching would-be rapists to change their ways, and as such it is a fitting end to her life.
Most movies in the rape/revenge sub-genre make a point of explicitly depicting the rape of their protagonist and ensuring that she survives her quest for vengeance. Promising Young Woman upends this approach, never depicting Cassie’s traumas explicitly but using her final assault and death as the basis of its cathartic denouement. As Cassie’s necklace symbolically proves, she is now at peace in death as she has been reunited with Nina and has brought Nina’s attackers to justice. It’s a bracing, brutal end to a daring movie, and an effective ending that ensures Promising Young Woman takes its place alongside The Nightingale, Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance, and You Were Never Really Here in the pantheon of classic contemporary revenge thrillers.
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