Endings are overrated. Or at least, the importance we attach to them tends to outstrip their actual significance. Quantitatively speaking, the typical ending constitutes less than 10% of a film’s runtime, so it seems peculiar that we factor their quality so heavily into our overall appreciation of a movie. At the same time, endings matter, if only as a simple matter of recency bias; it makes sense that our brains prioritize the last few scenes that we just watched as we leave the theater (or, sigh, exit the streaming service). That’s why a lousy ending can tarnish an otherwise enjoyable picture; by way of example, Danny Boyle’s mostly terrific Sunshine could have been a modern classic if it hadn’t so badly flubbed its finale. (The converse scenario, where a forgettable film is redeemed by a strong finish, is far more rare, though I’d submit for consideration Avengers: Infinity War.)
Promising Young Woman, which was just nominated for five Oscars, features an ending that is undeniably memorable—unusually so, given that it doesn’t rely on a big reveal à la The Sixth Sense or Planet of the Apes. I still don’t know whether its culmination is spectacular or terrible; what I do know is that it doesn’t change my opinion of the movie as a whole, which is largely fantastic. A modern jolt to the classic rape-revenge genre, Emerald Fennell’s debut feature is an exhilarating cocktail that blends provocative messaging with slow-building suspense and sure-handed craft. It’s a statement picture, both in that it has something to say and in that it announces the arrival of Fennell—heretofore best known as playing Camilla Parker Bowles on The Crown—as a hugely talented filmmaker. She could have wrapped up Promising Young Woman with aliens suddenly enacting a (ninth) plan from outer space, and the movie would remain a major achievement.
How she actually did conclude Promising Young Woman is a bit more complicated, and requires further contemplation. (Spoilers follow, obviously.) The beginning of the ending occurs when Cassie (Carey Mulligan), the med school dropout who has spent much of the film exacting vengeance on former classmates who were complicit in the rape of her best friend, learns that the principal assaulter is about to get married, and is attending his bachelor party at a remote wooded cabin. She drives to the location and methodically disguises herself: dyeing her dirty-blonde hair into rainbow shades, applying cherry-red lipstick, and donning a transparently sleazy nurse’s costume, complete with short skirt and stilettos. To this point, Cassie’s retribution has been emotional rather than physical (gaslighting a peer into believing that she committed infidelity, terrorizing an intransigent administrator into worrying for her daughter’s safety), but as she starts striding confidently toward the debauched lodge, a pink “||||” splashes across the screen—mirroring the ominous tally marks that she’s been keeping in a little black book—while a slowed-down string version of Britney Spears’ “Toxic” revs to life on the soundtrack. And at that point, it’s unmistakable: You are about to see some shit.
Well, you do and you don’t. One of the pleasures of Promising Young Woman is the way it subverts exploitation expectations while still gleefully indulging in the genre’s queasy thrills. (In a canny touch, the film opens years after its inciting incident, sparing Fennell from the typical obligation of depicting the incipient cruelty that inspires Cassie’s score-settling spree; in yet another clever move, Fennell produces a video of the event but never shows it to the audience, instead relying on Mulligan’s appalled reaction to communicate its horror.) After posing as a stripper and successfully isolating and handcuffing the groom, Al (Chris Lowell, from GLOW), Cassie reveals her identity and announces her intent to carve the victim’s name into his stomach, in the style of Inglourious Basterds (or, perhaps more aptly, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), as a permanent reminder of his prior predations. That’s when the first big surprise happens: Al breaks free of his cuffs and overpowers Cassie, suffocating her with a pillow.
It’s a ghastly sequence that’s also eerily controlled, with no spurts of blood or shrieks of pain; in fact, the only wailing comes from Al, who naturally laments that Cassie forced him into this position. And that, of course, taps in to one of the film’s primary themes: the myth of male victimhood. Throughout the film, characters express concern about the “nightmare” of sexual assault accusations, establishing a universe where decent men are at the mercy of conniving women. This is a dubious proposition, but what’s radical about Promising Young Woman is that it imagines a world where a woman does wield the power, and how this shift in the preconceived balance unsettles everyone around her. (Early on, with a single stare, Cassie turns a moment of routine catcalling into a pathetic display of impotent anger.)
Yet at the same time, the movie takes place in the very real world, a dispiritingly familiar place where men subjugate and disparage women less out of active malevolence than as an assumption of natural order. That’s why, at least initially, the ending of Promising Young Woman seems to acknowledge the futility of Cassie’s quest, not only for payback but for self-determination. Sure, Al exhibits a modicum of guilt, but after a feeble and very funny freak-out (Lowell’s reaction when a friend suggests that Cassie’s death was an accident is priceless), he buries her body and simply goes on with his life. The police investigate her disappearance but happily accept banal assertions that she was mentally ill and chalk her up as a missing person. And Al’s wedding proceeds as planned, a canned ritual of stale vows, awkward toasts, and aggressive leering at bridesmaids.
Had Promising Young Woman ended there, it may have felt dissatisfying, but I wonder if it might have been especially resonant. For all its slick polish and grisly excitement, the film is at its core depressing; it observes, with sobering authenticity, how men unthinkingly treat women as objects to be fetishized, conquered, and possessed. Cassie looms as a threatening figure not because she’s especially dangerous or sadistic, but because she represents an affront to this status quo. An ending where she’s forgotten—where Al and all of the other casually abusive men in her life face no consequences—plays as a bleak recognition of the depths of this entrenchment. It symbolizes a collision between fantasy and reality: Cassie was an unstoppable force, but she ran up against the immovable object that is the patriarchy.
Except that’s not what happens. Instead, we receive our second surprise, in which Cassie’s machinations extend from beyond the grave. As it turns out, before she traveled to the cabin, she made careful arrangements—involving that incriminating video, a set of instructions, and a broken necklace—to ensure that her scheme was (to borrow from another Tarantino picture) virtually death-proof. Police storm into Al’s once-serene nuptials to escort him away in a new set of handcuffs, while scheduled texts from Cassie arrive on the phone of her spineless ex-boyfriend, affirming her supremacy. (The ex is played by a very fine Bo Burnham, and I could write a whole other essay about the sinister implications of his character’s pseudo-friendly hollowness.) Fennell again codes this visually; this time, the tally marks receive a fifth, final, cathartic slash: ||||. Cassie may be dead, but she still triumphed.
In the moment, this is deeply rewarding. She won! Fuck those assholes! Truth, justice, and the feminine way!
Yet upon reflection, I wonder if this is the message that Fennell truly wanted to send, or whether it’s in keeping with the movie’s themes. The issue isn’t just that, in transforming Cassie into an ostensible superhero, Fennell irons out her complexities and erases her self-doubt. It’s more the suggestion that women’s struggles can be overcome through the proper combination of intelligence, criminality, and pluck. What animates Promising Young Woman is its understanding that the loathsome behavior Cassie witnesses and suffers—not just the ubiquitous specter of assault, but the constant ogling, the slut-shaming, the sense of ownership—is everywhere. It’s in every bar, every coffee shop, every college campus. Cassie boldly seeks to eradicate this inequity, but it’s an awfully uphill battle. Does her putative victory, gratifying though it is, inadvertently diminish the same challenges faced by so many other women who lack her guile and toughness (not to mention her willingness to sacrifice herself)?
Maybe not. As I mentioned, Promising Young Woman paints a gloomily accurate portrait of contemporary gender dynamics, but it isn’t strictly a work of realism. It instead unfolds in a recognizable movie-verse: an expertly manicured realm of neon lighting, quippy banter, and heightened sensations. This isn’t a criticism; it’s perfectly sensible for Fennell to amp up the film’s aesthetic, the better to emphasize the scathing intensity of her critique. And when interpreted through this lens of surreality, perhaps the celebratory feeling brought on by the movie’s ending becomes reconcilable with the simmering displeasure induced by its themes. Perhaps the only palatable conclusion here is an escape—one that transforms a grim thriller into a gleeful fairytale.
It’s hard to say for sure. But maybe that’s the point. Unlike, say, The Departed—whose snarling, justice-for-all finale felt vaguely appropriate but lacked the more pervasive despair of its progenitor, Infernal Affairs—Promising Young Woman’s eat-your-cake-and-have-it-too approach doesn’t automatically contradict its fighting spirit. There is still more work to be done—more marks to tally—and Cassie’s personal coup hardly minimizes the plight of her brethren. Nor can it possibly dampen the considerable accomplishments of this rousing, fascinating movie, which—regardless of whether its ending is a vindication or a betrayal—largely delivers on its enormous potential. Promise made, promise kept.
Jeremy Beck is the editor-in-chief of MovieManifesto. He watches more movies and television than he probably should.