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In the days before social media, high school was hard enough. Kids could be cliquey and mean. But, thanks to social media, bullying today is so much easier—and often much more extreme. And in Netflix’s dark teen comedy Do Revenge, two girls team up to turn the tables on their bullies.
Do Revenge follows two furious teens as they set out to help each other get revenge. Drea (Camila Mendes) was once the most popular girl in school—until her boyfriend, Max (Austin Abrams), apparently leaked a compromising video. Eleanor (Maya Hawke), meanwhile, hasn’t been the same since she was humiliated by a former friend when she was just 13. When they meet at tennis camp the summer before their senior year, they decide to get each other’s revenge—and they build a secret friendship around their obsession with vengeance.
As the two teens start the school year, they find themselves in very different positions. Drea is now an outcast in the school she once ruled, while, with Drea’s help, Eleanor has been transformed into the mysterious new girl who quickly finds her way into the In Crowd. But, through secret meetings, they work together on their plan to take down those who hurt them.
Everything about this school may seem posh and pretty—with pastel uniforms featuring capes and ties and berets in pretty greens and lavenders—but, beneath the surface, it’s all incredibly dark. These two young women set out to scheme and conspire and manipulate—to make people pay for getting away with destroying the girls’ lives—but they’re clearly not the only ones with an agenda. Most of the characters here aren’t what they appear to be on the surface—and as more of their secrets are revealed, you may be surprised by some of the twists.
Still, the darker it gets, the more this twisting, turning story seems to get distracted by its darkness and its characters’ obsession with revenge. By the end, you won’t be able to tell the good guys from the bad guys. You lose the point of it all. And you just won’t know how to feel about it anymore.
Do Revenge is a comically sinister look at teen bullying, wrapped up in edgy fashion and frothy prep school uniforms with an unexpected ‘90s soundtrack. It’s a stylish film—but it’s so caught up in its style that it loses some of its substance in the end.
Do Revenge makes its Netflix debut on September 16, 2022.
Listen to the review on Reel Discovery:
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