Delayed Reaction: Do Revenge

Premise: Two high school girls pull a "Strangers on a Train" to get back at those who have wronged them.

 

The Netflix high school movies are weird. At first, I thought it was just because I'm in my 30s now, and the films are no longer being aimed at me. Then Paramount, Amazon, and Hulu all made high school movies too. Those didn't feel off at all. They were updated for today's teens, but the movies themselves felt like high school movies I know. I think it all comes down to Netflix high school movies being made like they are TV shows. I remember that's what threw me off with To All the Boys I've Loved Before. Watching that was like coming into a TV show 12 episodes in. It just drops you into the movie, and I kept having the feeling that I missed assigned reading that the rest of the class had.

 

Do Revenge is very much the same. It's like it begins mid-sentence. I wouldn't be surprised if the same people at Netflix in charge of the high school TV content are in charge of the movie content. I'm watching a TV show that happens to have one 120-minute episode. That must be intentional. There's a world where I could imagine a Crush (Netflix) or Honor Society (Paramount+) actually getting a theatrical release. I can't see any of these Netflix high school movies in a theater.

 

Beyond those weird platform and production issues, I did enjoy Do Revenge. Like He's All That, it's a movie made by fans of the 90s and 00s high school comedies. So, even if I wasn't the direct audience, I was certainly being considered secondarily. I don't watch Riverdale, so I don't know Camila Mendes from much. She's perfect for the main role in this though. She's like a sympathetic Regina George and that's deceptively hard to pull off. Maya Hawke is playing more to type. It is funny how we all collectively agree on a certain incredibly attractive (because they all are) actress being believable as an outcast more than others. Because Hawke really does play a reject well.

 

Side Rant: It's funny. Back in the 90s, when I was a preteen, I remember people commenting on how everyone in the movies are actually in their 20s. I noticed it, but there's that thing when you are growing up where everyone older than you seem like full-grown adults. So I never minded Freddie Prinze Jr. playing a high school senior, because that's what Seniors broadly looked like to me. Now I'm on the other side of it. Everyone on screen looks young to me. So, while Camila Mendes is 28, I don't care because she looks young enough to me. It's crazy how miscast aging will apparently never bother me in movies; broadly speaking.

 

There were two big aspects of Do Revenge that I really appreciated. The first is that I absolutely didn't see the twist coming. I'll admit that I'm an easy mark, but this isn't a genre known for being all that clever. By the time the twist came, I'd mentally written how the rest of the movie would play out. Then it turns out Maya Hawke was actually the mastermind getting a different kind of revenge, and I happily threw out any guesses I had about where the movie was going from there. That said, the movie does get a little too proud of itself for that twist then tries its luck too much by the end. It gets twist-happy. I get the feeling that the movie believes that since they tricked the audience once, they could remain a step ahead of the audience for the remainder of the movie. They couldn't. I may have stopped guessing what would happen next, but that doesn't mean I couldn't've. It still follows a lot of tropes.

 

Another choice I liked that got extra-highlighted because I saw Honor Society the same day. I like that Mendes and Hawke actually do end the movie as friends. It's kind of a "game respects game" friendship. It's a classic case of Hawke falling fer her mark. A lot of movies forget that just because something is part of a scheme, the characters aren't sociopaths. If you get close to someone, eventually it does become real. I'm glad the movie didn't make Hawke a sociopath. Although, there's a version of this movie more inspired by Gone Girl that could've been really fun.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend