Directed by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson
Written by Celeste Ballard and Jennifer Kaytin Robinson
Starring Camila Mendes, Maya Hawke, Austin Abrams, Alisha Boe, and Sophie Turner
Runtime: 1 hour and 58 minutes
Streaming on Netflix starting September 16th

by Emily Maesar, Staff Writer

There’s a very vast and beautiful history of classic texts, like the plays of William Shakespeare and the novels of Jane Austen, being adapted into modern teen films. It’s a well-worn part of teen media (one that I talked about on occasion last year in my monthly column You Can’t Sit With Us: The Cinematic Lives of American Teens). But Do Revenge does something slightly different by bringing in a much more timely classic (by certain standards, anyway) as the text from which it’s pulling.

Which is to say: are we finally at the point where we consider films to be classics that we can adapt into teen flicks? Because I’m very intrigued by this revelation, if so. I don’t think Alfred Hitchcock would be too delighted… but who cares?

Now, if you were wondering, the Hitchcock film that Ballard and Robinson seem to be pulling from is the classic Strangers on a Train, which was released over 70 years ago. While there’s no murder plot set up, the basic idea of “if you do my thing and I do your thing, no one will ever guess” works pretty well for a teen revenge thriller. It even gets in some pretty fun twists and turns that are great in a popcorn on the couch kinda way (which is useful, since this is a Netflix original).

In Do Revenge we meet Drea (Camila Mendes). She’s a scholarship student at a very fancy prep school in Miami and she dreams about getting into Yale and then going to Harvard Law. As her junior year comes to a close her then boyfriend, Max (Austin Abrams), leaks a topless video of her—ruining her reputation, relationships, and potentially her future.

Over the summer she works as a tennis instructor at a rich-kid tennis camp where she meets Eleanor (Maya Hawke). They realize that Eleanor is transferring to Drea’s high school for senior year and they get to talking. When Drea confides in Eleanor what happened between her and Max, Eleanor tells her that when she was young, and coming out, a girl she had a crush on told everybody that Eleanor held her down and tried to kiss her, making her out to be a gay predator.

Wanting—no, needing—revenge on Max and Carissa (Ava Capri), Drea and Eleanor hatch a Strangers on a Train type plan to do each other’s revenge. But with a bit less murder, you know? And to say anything else would be to spoil some pretty fun revelations and turns befitting a Hitchcock retelling. Now, there are moments that are cringy, in the “Millennials writing Gen Z” kind of way, but the film never quite falls into the pit of cringe we so often see these days. Although, I suppose, your result may vary on that. As with most things.

Other than the Hitchcock of it all, though, Do Revenge pays great homage to the teen films of Millennials. And I do think that part of how Ballard and Robinson stop the film from being so cringe is because they don’t have the characters reference those films. No, the plotting, costumes, production design, and music are the ways in which they provoke the warm and fuzzy feelings of teen films past.

From Clueless, Mean Girls, 10 Things I Hate About You, and even a bit of John Tucker Must Die, the characters and their world feel like the best parts of teen media from the last two and a half decades. And because it’s Robinson (and Este Haim is part of the team who did the music) there’s some lovely Taylor Swift references to boot.

Also, there’s certainly something to be said about the fact that the main plot inspiration that Do Revenge is pulling from was originally the product of one of our great literary lesbians: Patricia Highsmith. Maya Hawke is very quickly becoming a sapphic icon between this, Robin in Stranger Things, and her playing the Jo March in a 2017 BBC adaptation of Little Women. And, like Booksmart before it, Do Revenge exists in a Gen Z world where everybody’s either queer or deeply supportive. However, something I actually find refreshing about Do Revenge is that it does, at least ostensibly, want to look at the ways that young children weaponise queer “otherness” against their peers. Even if those kids grow up to be better than they were in their youth. Which is a conversation I’d actually love to have, especially given how much the social landscape has changed since I was a kid.

The film does suffer slightly from being a bit too long for the story it’s telling and from the final resolution between the leads being entirely too quick for the sake of the plot. However, the film really allows Camila Mendes to shine outside of Riverdale, something I’ve been desperate for since that show premiered. There are some really great performances from Sophie Turner and Sarah Michelle Gellar that absolutely delight me, too.

I wasn’t a huge fan of Someone Great, Robinson’s last Netflix flick, but her short-lived MTV series Sweet/Vicious will always own my heart—and Do Revenge is a return to the form I admired most from her. It’s a flashy, smart, and deeply fun ride from top to bottom.