6.5 / 10
Why I Watched It
I came to Promising Young Woman through a few clips on YouTube. They looked sharp, and the clips were right. It’s a pretty good movie, better than I expected going in.
It’s also uneven. I’d score the three acts very differently, and the gap between the best part and the worst part is wide. I’ll take them one at a time.
Emerald Fennell wrote and directed it. It was her first feature as a director, and it won her the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.
The Setup
Cassie Thomas is 30. She dropped out of medical school years ago, lives with her parents and works in a coffee shop. At night she goes to bars alone, acts falling-down drunk and waits for a “nice guy” to take her home. When he makes his move, she drops the act, stone sober, and lets him see exactly what he was about to do.
The reason is Nina, her best friend from medical school. Nina was assaulted by a classmate, Al Monroe, while others watched. The school dismissed her complaint, and Nina never recovered. Cassie never moved on either.
Carey Mulligan carries the whole thing. She plays Cassie as funny, cold, wounded and frightening, sometimes in the same scene, and she was nominated for Best Actress for it.
The First Act: a 7
The first act is pretty good. It sets up the hook fast, gives you a heroine with a clear and unsettling routine, and lets you watch the men in the bars walk straight into it. The tone is strange, part dark comedy and part thriller, and it works because Mulligan never winks at the camera.
I’d give the first act a 7. It promises a lot.
For Writers
Cassie’s nightly routine tells you who she is before anyone explains why.
Open with what your character does, not with her history. A strange, repeated behavior raises the question the backstory will answer later, and the reader keeps reading to find out. Explain the routine too early and you lose that pull.
The Second Act: a 4
Then the middle sags, badly. This is the stretch where Cassie reconnects with Ryan, a former classmate played by Bo Burnham, and starts a romance with him. Alongside it, she works her way through the people who let Nina down: Madison, a classmate played by Alison Brie, the dean who dismissed the complaint, played by Connie Britton, and the lawyer who defended Al.
Each of those encounters is a scene, but for me the middle never built the way the opening promised. I’d give it a 4, and it’s the reason the overall score isn’t higher.
For Writers
A strong opening and a strong ending can’t carry a slack middle.
The middle is where the reader decides whether to keep going. Every scene there should raise the stakes or turn the story. Repeating the pattern the opening established is how a middle stalls. I go into the structural fix in why your second act keeps dying.
The Third Act: a 9
The third act took me by surprise, and it’s the best part of the movie. I’d give it a 9.
I won’t spoil it. The final act turns on a setup you don’t realize is being built while you watch, and a couple of twists and turns land hard. When the last piece falls into place, the whole film looks different, and some of the scenes I’d been impatient with in the middle suddenly had a job.
That setup at the end is the reason I enjoyed the film. Plenty of thrillers have twists. Very few earn them this well.
For Writers
The ending works because it was planted earlier, in plain sight.
A twist that comes from nowhere feels like a cheat. A twist built from pieces the audience already saw feels like a revelation. Plant the parts early, give each one a reason to be there on its own, and let the reader assemble them at the moment you choose. My guide to writing a plot twist readers never see coming walks through it.
Behind the Scenes
The production was small and fast. Margot Robbie’s company, LuckyChap Entertainment, produced it, and the shoot ran 23 days in Los Angeles in the spring of 2019. Much of the campus footage was filmed at Cal Poly Pomona.
It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2020. The theatrical release was set for April, then the pandemic closed theaters, and Focus Features finally released it on Christmas Day 2020. On a budget of about $10 million, it took in roughly $18.9 million worldwide.
The awards made up for the box office. Besides Fennell’s Oscar for the screenplay, it was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress and Best Film Editing, and it won Outstanding British Film at the BAFTAs.
For Writers
The screenplay won the Oscar even though the middle drags.
Readers and audiences forgive a lot for an ending that pays off. That isn’t permission to write a weak middle, but it is a reminder of where the weight sits. If you only have time to polish one part of a draft, make it the ending and the setups that feed it.
Is Promising Young Woman worth watching?
Yes, with a warning about the middle. The first act is a 7, the second is a 4 and the third is a 9. That comes out to about a 6.5 overall. I enjoyed it, mostly because of the setup at the end and the way the last act pulls everything together.
Stick with it through the slow stretch. The ending is worth it. If you like a thriller where the woman at the center is several steps ahead of everyone, try Gone Girl next, and my ranked thriller lists have plenty more.
- Promising Young Woman, Wikipedia
- The 93rd Academy Awards, 2021, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
- Promising Young Woman (2020), The Numbers
- Greedy Emerald Fennell wants to balance acting and directing, The Irish News
