Movie Reviews: A one-woman war to reclaim the streets, bars and nightclubs from sleazy scumbags
Carey Mulligan as Cassie and Bo Burnham as Ryan in Promising Young Woman: a 'timely and important' thriller.
Once a high-achieving medical student, Cassie (Carey Mulligan) was regarded as a (18s) until a mysterious event derailed her life. Working as a waitress, Cassie now offers a different kind of promise, luring predatory men into her web before terrorising them into seeing the error of their ways. Then Cassie reconnects with her old college friend Ryan (Bo Burnham), who seems to be that rarest of beasts — ‘a nice guy’. Is Cassie about to get her life back on track?
Written and directed by Emerald Fennell (Nurse Patsy Mount in and Camilla Parker Bowles in ), is a powerful blend of the personal and the political: as Cassie wages her one-woman war to reclaim the streets, bars and nightclubs from the sleazy scumbags who prey on vulnerable women, her story becomes a herstory, in which the female of the species truly is deadlier than the male.
That the film is both timely and important is a given, but Emerald Fennell isn’t content with skewering male privilege, delivering a masterclass in tension and palpable danger as Cassie wades ever farther into the darkest depths of the revenge thriller. Indeed, one of the most enjoyable aspects of the film is that there’s no knowing what Cassie might do next, or how far she will push her vengeance, and Carey Mulligan is simply superb in the lead role, deliciously understated (and showcasing fabulous comic timing) as a latter-day Medea who believes in a primitive but entirely appropriate form of justice.
A strong supporting cast includes Alison Brie and Laverne Cox, but the real stars here are Carey Mulligan and Emerald Fennell, with the latter displaying a ferocious talent in her feature-length debut as writer-director. (Sky / Now TV)
Set in the wake of a global radioactive fall-out that has transformed tiny creatures into dinosaur-sized roaches, ants, spiders and toads, (12A) stars Dylan O’Brien as Joel, a chef who has spent the past seven years holed up in an underground bunker with a small colony of survivors.
When Joel learns that his teenage sweetheart, Aimee (Jessica Henwick), is living in a colony 85 miles away, he decides to embark on the potentially lethal trek — what’s the point in surviving, after all, without love? Armed only with a crossbow, a veritable peashooter given the monsters he’s likely to encounter, Joel sets out to reunite with Aimee.
Written by Matthew Robinson and Brian Duffield, with Michael Matthews directing, is a refreshingly upbeat take on the traditionally gloomy post-apocalypse tale. Joel encounters many perils on his trip, of course — there are shades of The Lost World and the Jurassic Park movies in his near-death escapes from weird-‘n’-wonderful beasties — but he also makes new friends, which include a dog called Boy, the unlikely duo of Clyde (Michael Rooker) and his surrogate daughter Minnow (Ariana Greenblatt), and a dying robot called Mavis (voiced by Melanie Zanetti).
Dylan O’Brien makes for very likeable company on the journey, with the self-deprecating Joel acutely aware of his many limitations, which include the unfortunate habit of physically freezing in times of stress. Chock-a-block with thrills and spills, and a host of increasingly inventive monsters, Love and Monsters is a charming, old-fashioned yarn in the Saturday matinee tradition, and which subtly informs us that there’s far more to life than hiding away from danger. (Netflix)
(15A) opens with Samantha (Valentina Bellé) waking up in hospital to be greeted by the psychologist Dr Green (Dustin Hoffman), who informs her that she is finally safe. Samantha, it transpires, was abducted as a 13-year-old; fifteen years later, she has somehow managed to escape from ‘the labyrinth’ she dimly remembers.
It’s Dr Green’s job to find out who kidnapped Samantha, and where she was held, an investigation that quickly gets complicated when Samantha insists that his probing ‘is all a game’. Meanwhile, the dying debt collector Genko (Toni Servillo), who is investigating Samantha’s reappearance as a kind of redemptive penance for his wasted life, starts to realise that Samantha’s kidnapper is a kind of demonic rabbit that goes under the moniker 'Bunny'.
Adapted by Donato Carrisi from his own novel, with Carrisi himself directing, is a febrile mix of psychological thriller, private eye noir and dark fairytale. The blend isn’t always successful, even if the main players, and particularly the grizzled, chain-smoking Toni Servillo, are compelling in their own right; as the loosely linked plot strands are woven together, the movie takes on the hallucinatory quality of a fever-dream, in which any kind of madness might occur, and frequently does.
That said, it remains gripping throughout, and somehow manages to deliver a finale that makes sense of the chaos. (digital release)
