Promising Young Woman marries dark comedy with #MeToo revenge fantasy spurred by campus rape culture

Revenge is a dish served bold in Promising Young Woman, an ambitious, erratic dark comedy starring Carey Mulligan (The Great Gatsby; Shame) as a man-baiting loner haunted by the college sexual assault of her best friend.

Content warning: the film reviewed deals with sexual assault and rape.

It’s a movie directly, unapologetically ripped from the headlines around campus rape from a few years ago, in which “promising” — read: affluent, white — young men were routinely excused from assault charges, or shown extreme leniency, and where slut shaming was a common refrain that derailed the lives of the victims.

When we first see Cassie (Mulligan), straw blonde hair as dishevelled as her nine-to-five office clothes, she appears to be blackout…