Let’s be honest, Netflix’s era of algorithmic automation is not the best (and that’s sugar-coating it). The streaming platform has very much moved into the age of doing stuff that’ll topple its charts, and making sequels based on clamours for it, and not whether they make any proper sense. It’s a capitalism thing, whereby the era of filmmaking has become less about art and more about content, and Netflix embodies that more than most. So, you’d be forgiven for watching Do Revenge – yet another instalment in the Netflix high-school movie slate – with scepticism, if you’d even watch it at all.
But this hit Netflix movie – written, directed, and produced by Jennifer Kaitlyn Robinson – is just about worth the fanfare and love it’s gotten since release:
Do Revenge – The Good
Arguably no better place to start than with the lead duo. Cami Mendes and Maya Hawke were definitely on song in this movie, whether the air surrounding the pair was unfamiliarity, friendship, or animosity. The chemistry between the central characters gives buddy-cop energy as it does high school BFF; and their performance as pair hardly gets in the way of – neither is it overshadowed by – their respective individual displays. They could hold their own when the screen needed it to be just them, just as they could light it up as a team.
Do Revenge presents one of the most brilliant movie plot twists you’d see, and that’s saying something that it happens in a high-school flick. At first, this movie reads like a very good flick that might be acting as some kind of re-enactment – if not imitation – of the legendary Mean Girls from 2004; with the good timid girl is pushed into hanging with the in group, and then becoming the monster she was meant to take down. Instead, Do Revenge gives us a movie whereby the monster was cosplaying all along.
This movie also does well to touch on different social bits. From outright misogyny, whereby it remains easy for men to cosplay as progressive, and for women to suffer the backlash from male predatory violence; to class relations, and its reflections of how much performance it requires to act like a member of the cream of the cream, and how you’d never be accepted no matter what. Even the super-rich trust fund kids seem to have their lives dictated by proximity to class (what else is new).
Plus, Sophie Turner’s cameo is the finishing touch to it all.
The Bad
The social relations and reflections are probably where Do Revenge doesn’t quite hit the bullseye. This movie makes the point of how the powerful and the favoured get away with stuff in society, yet turns around and ends on an opposing note. Perhaps it’s down to the need for a feelgood ending, which one could understand. But Do Revenge does kind of betray that point, and renders itself quite naïve in the end; it takes more than that do pinch the powerful, and it takes more than that for people to do away with class relations.
Plus, there’s something artificial about this film in some parts. Particularly with Sarah Michelle Gellar, whose role is little more than Sarah Michelle Gellar trying to play cool mean high-school principal. It felt like an actor wanting to play into a trope, or being forced to embody one, and pretty much strips her of any sort of authenticity.
The Ugly
Not so much The Ugly in this case as it is The Need for Something to Fill This Section; the age of actors in mid—20s playing high-school kids should probably be done with.
Conclusion
Do Revenge has its drawbacks – it’s a Netflix high-school movie, after all. But this film is still very much on the money. A perfect mix of chemistry, rage, deviousness, plot twist, and loveable cameo; Do Revenge might be the high school movie to end all high school movies, in the sense that this would be perfect way to close the book on the genre. In an era where platforms and studios are seeking content instead of good movies, Do Revenge shows that you can do both.
On About Nothing Rating: 8.5/10
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