therhyswelsh’s review published on Letterboxd:
I think Netflix’s newest feature, Do Revenge, has the same problem that made the Angourie Rice-starring film, Honour Society feel kind of middling, it’s a formulaic and generic teen flick that is saved by a third act twist that comes too late to save the entire feature. The film follows Drea (Camila Mendes) and Eleanor (Maya Hawke) who team up when they become social outcasts and decide to take revenge on the people who put them in their current situations. If this plot sounds kind of generic and you have already seen this film before, then you are completely right, it’s a riff on the Mean Girls-type flick, but the thing is that Mean Girls really was a lightning in the bottle film and it’s hard to recreate it, this film tries and it definitely works half the time.
The entire reason this film works at all is because of Camila Mendes and Maya Hawke, they are both really charming leads who have great chemistry, the scenes with just them two are super fun. The small scenes of Sophie Turner and Sarah Michelle Gellar are clear standouts as well, and I think Austin Abrams really shines in the third act when he was fairly average beforehand. The third act is really where this film shines, when the film finally gets through all the cliche and predictable stuff, it hits you with a decent twist that feels fresh and makes the final act actually compelling to watch. It’s a real shame that they waited so long to drop that twist, the movie is 2 hours long for some reason and the film could of definitely done with a little bit of spicing across the entire runtime. At least the film is pretty to look at most of the time, it’s got the cheap feeling of many Netflix films but still has a nice visual style that gives it some sort of energy.
Gonna leave this one off with a 5/10, it’s completely fine, I was hoping for a little bit better based on the reviews on here but it’s completely okay, I had a fun time
