These debates are of relevance to this article because, in reality, the identities of the two clashing cultures (that of the Osage, and the all-consuming wave of capitalist USA) are largely irrelevant to the thematic core of the story. They are relevant in that they are only tangential to the beating heart of the point of the film. This specific filmic presentation of this storyline uses the Osage and white USA as two sides of the coin, but you could transplant this to colonial Africa with Britain exploiting the native peoples of those nations and it could be the same frame with differing cosmetics. Put a French colonial power in Vietnam or Morocco, and the same is there. Go to Tasmania and look at the occupying forces there, as Jennifer Kent did with her revenge western The Nightingale. The principals remain constant, an examination of the deliberate exercise of colonial, oppressional power over the native inhabitants of a land. This is what the surface level of Killers of the Flower Moon would have us take away.

Whilst KOTFM is based on a book (“Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI”, by David Grann), which is in turn based on real events, it is the specific presentation of events in Martin Scorsese’s film which are of discussion here. This film’s narrative, detailing the marriages and assassinations of Osage people at the hands of white locals in order for the white people to strategically inherit their oil-rich land, is not the centre of the film. It is not what it is all about. As is often the case, the plot and the story are different levels of communication.

Instead, the film is actually about the relationship between Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) and William King Hale (Robert De Niro), and the exploitation of a malleable, weak individual by a stronger, more ambitious, and more ruthless mind. The plot goes along, but what drives it is the obedience and defiance of Burkhart to his powerful uncle. De Niro is the snake whispering in DiCaprio’s Eve of an ear with the promise of power from the metaphorical tree of knowledge. It is about evil corrupting those who are on the fence, and dragging them down to the ground. Once we realise this, we see that much of KOTFM plays out as a reinterpretation of William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”, written over 400 years ago. Not everything lines up perfectly (that’s how reinterpretations work; Akira Kurosawa had the three witches changed for a single medium in Throne of Blood, for example), but there are enough similarities to line up fairly nicely.

Macbeth, warlord for King Duncan of Scotland, begins the play having just taken out Macdonald, an usurper to the throne. His penchant for violence is well noted, and in killing Macdonald, ‘unseam’d him from the nave to th’chops’. In KOTFM, Earnest Burkhart may not be quite that violent, but he does return at the film’s opening from WWI, so they both have that ability in them, having both returned from national combat. In Macbeth, the titular character is told of a prophecy that he will one day be king, which he expresses with his wife. Lady Macbeth then takes charge, constantly whispering to him that the prophecy will come true, that he will be king. She already has a plan. Everything will be OK. She tells her husband ‘look like the innocent flower,/ But be the serpent udner’t.’ The mention of flowers here is obviously mere coincidence in connection with the film’s title, but it is exactly this notion of being the evil hiding in plain sight under a notion of goodness which both Ernest and King act out in KOTFM. King is constantly giving out grants and finances to the community, and is fluent in the Dhegihan Siouan language of the Osage. Lady Macbeth, in Duncan’s words, is ‘our honour’d hostess!’. The similarities are plain to see in the setup. Lady Macbeth manipulates her husband into carrying out murders so that he will become King and inherit the country, and make her queen by default, which is what she is really after. In KOTFM, Ernest is manipulated by King to carry out murders so that Ernest will inherit the wealthy land, and King will get some of the wealth as a result. Once more, the whisperer in the ear is not so much concerned with the wellbeing of their familiar, but what their understudy’s success will mean for them.

A common misconception with Macbeth’s character is that he is a tyrant and ambitious warlord right from the start. He may well have ambition, but most of his actions are as a result of the persuasion of his wife, and then being in too deep to pull out. Macbeth asks before murdering the king what happens ‘If we should fail?’, and Lady Macbeth has to reassure him to ‘nail your courage to the sticking place,/ And we’ll not fail.’ He constantly questions whether what he is doing is right, hallucinating the murderous dagger before going to kill Duncan, his mind already fracturing under the pressure. After one murder, everything runs away from him, and he has no choice but to keep going. He must kill his friend, Banquo, not only because of the witches’ prophecy that Banquo will sire a line of kings, but because of Banquo’s tendency to sit on the fence about absolutes. Banquo is unsure about the intentions of the witches, ‘oftentimes, to win us to our harm,/ The instruments of darkness tell us truths,/ Win us with honest trifles…’ and even muses to himself as part of a soliloquy to open Act 3 Scene 1, about Macbeth becoming king, that ‘Thou play’dst most foully for’t…’ It’s clear that Banquo would never be on Macbeth’s side, for as much as he is Macbeth’s friend and similar in many ways (he is also a great warrior on the battlefield, and fought alongside Macbeth against Macdowell), he is always on the side of justice and so must be silenced. Macbeth therefore pays two assassins to take out Banquo to keep himself in power. After this, when Macduff flees, Macbeth brands him a traitor and must kill his family as a warning against uprising. He rules with the sheer intention of holding onto the power he was (to an extent) pressured into. With his wife’s persuasion, he has dug a hole, and he refuses to stop digging, instead continuing down in the hopes of an escape.

Ernest likewise finds himself executing more and more murders in order to maintain his position and keep himself close to King. He pays to have Harry Roan killed as part of King’s plan, but it goes wrong, showing that Ernest isn’t as completely in control of things as he would like to think. He later hires for the murder of more family members, which begins to put his wife Molly into a kind of surrogate role for three characters; that of Duncan (the one who holds the power), Banquo (someone he must kill, and appears, ghostlike, to haunt and prevent Ernest from keeping himself completely on the dark side), and eventually Macduff (when she goes to Washington to bring reinforcements to out the tyrant). Note that like Macbeth, Ernest is often reticent to kill himself, and on multiple occasions gets others to carry out his dirty work for him.

It is, tangentially, interesting that a deliberate highlighting of King’s membership to freemasonry is made in the outcome of the botched assassination of Roan, as this implies a belief in a supreme being. There are a lot of supernatural moments in Macbeth, from witches to prophecies to apparitions to ghosts, to the appearance of Hecate (for almost no reason except to tell the witches to go somewhere and have a musical number; got to maintain audience interest somehow). But Lady Macbeth also clearly believes in spirits, through her belief that the prophecy must come true, and explicitly in her speech calling to them; ‘Come, you spirits/ That tend on mortal thoughts…’ Once again, more parallels appear.

In the second half of Killers of the Flower Moon, the new Bureau of Investigation is brought into the scene by Molly, Ernest’s wife, fulfilling her role as a partial avatar for Macduff. Led by Jesse Plemons’ Tom White (who plays the military side of Macduff), a kind of army from a land far away (Washington standing in for England, in a twist of irony for American history), arrives in the town. The BOI is not exactly the moving copse of Burnham’s wood, but what is interesting is not necessarily the arrival of the cavalry, but what this does for Ernest, who the plot centres around.

In the final reels he undergoes a constant turmoil of emotions. This mix has been seen throughout in relation to his seemingly genuine affection for his wife, Molly, and at one point he swallows some of the poison he has been putting in her insulin. The similarity to Macbeth Act 3 Scene 2, where Macbeth is tormented by what he is doing, beautifully demonstrated by the famous line of ‘full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!’, is interesting, as scorpions are known for their poisonous sting.

Three points are of note in the finale of the film and play in relation to this turmoil. Firstly, Ernest is initially convinced to fight on and defend King by the townsfolk (the white ones, at least), in order to preserve their way of life; after all, King is a great benefactor for the town. In Macbeth, despite the army marching toward them and the apparent tyrannical rule of Macbeth (Macduff describes him as the ‘fiend of Scotland’), he still has servants and doctors attending him, messengers, and so on. However, overcome by sorrow for his child who has passed away, Ernest decides to testify against King. This idea that the battle is perhaps lost is mirrored in Macbeth’s final soliloquy, where he stares into the abyss of time and finds life meaningless, the fighting pointless, the murder empty. Life, he says, ‘is a tale/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,/ Signifying nothing.’ However, there is still a little of that bitterness in him. Macbeth still fights on, despite Macduff telling him that the prophecy has come true and Macbeth can die by his hand. He says, ‘I throw my warlike shield: lay on, Macduff;/ And damn’d be him that first cries ‘Hold, enough!’ Similarly, Ernest can’t admit to Molly, when she has recovered and she knows he was poisoning her, even with prison just around the corner, that he was putting the poison in the insulin. Like Macbeth, there’s still that initial grain of darkness left inside him. It’s not a big, eye-popping finale as seen in Justin Kurzel’s direct 2015 adaptation, but it is a moving finale nonetheless.

This article hasn’t been to say that Scorsese deliberately set out to make a new version of a classic Shakespeare tale with this film. It’s not even to say that Scorsese must have been deliberately conscious of Macbeth when adapting the script. Indeed, most of the elements (though shifted and changed a little for dramatic purposes), were based on the real serial murders of innocent people – the real Ernest Burkhart and William King Hale were despicable individuals. For all of the extraordinary influence of The Bard, he didn’t create these people. Additionally, by saying that this presentation of the narrative echoes Macbeth should not in any way be taken as a suggestion that it reduces these figures to caricatures. Real lives were lost needlessly and cruelly by individuals hellbent on murder for their own material gain.

What it does hope to show, however, is how much William Shakespeare was able to put a finger on human nature, and how he was seemingly able to immortalise it in a narrative that has its unconscious echoes throughout time, to be rediscovered in the most unlikely of places. The real history and folklore that inspired Shakespeare to write Macbeth were not invented by him, but he found a way to use it to shine a light on the folly of humankind, and the corruption underneath polite society. That these narrative ideas find their way across the centuries, across the waters, to Scorsese’s film (which did have script changes in development, showing that differing perspectives and angles even to real events are possible), proves if nothing else that cinema as a medium has harsh truths inside its beams of light. That these stories are still relevant, redigested, disguised, and re-presented, is both a damning proof of humanity’s inability to learn from its past, and a testament to storytelling’s continued effort to plead with us to listen.

Recommended for you: Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) Review

They’ve come in many guises over the years, from the monarchical to the Machiavellian, monsters to muscle men, sorcerers, schemers and step-parents. And they have shown levels of genius, incompetence and everything in between in their efforts to thwart our heroes. But they are always without fail ambitious, self-serving and strangely compelling.

In a world of promoting good virtues to children, good must always triumph over evil. And so, Disney villains can’t be left to return and cause havoc another day (unless it’s in an inconsequential direct-to-video sequel) and so usually meet their maker in one of a variety of inventive and sometimes gruesome ways.

If the Disney Princess is the most merchandisable element of the Disney canon, then the villains are a close second and inspire even more fervour among adult fans, perhaps because they’re usually more flawed and interesting than the heroes and especially when so many are (intentionally or not) queer-coded, fabulously designed and played with gusto by talented voice actors giving it their all. 

For this edition of Ranked, we at The Film Magazine have taken every significant villain to be found in Disney animation and ordered them in terms of wickedness, memorability and the threat they represent to our heroes and heroines. So practice your diabolical laughter, rehearse your evil monologue, dust off your best purple attire and enjoy Animated Disney Villains Ranked. 

Follow @thefilmagazine on X (Twitter).

36. King Candy – Wreck-It Ralph (2012)

The ruler of arcade racing video game Sugar Rush who is actually Turbo, the resentful title character of a long-disconnected game.

Alan Tudyk has been Disney’s good luck charm in recent years and delivers a manic performance here as a mascot-gone-wrong, but the vocals have to do most of the work to enliven a baddie who’s just not interesting enough to match the heroes.

Demise by: Destroyed by the collapse of Diet Cola Mountain with the addition of Mentos.

35. Prince Hans – Frozen (2013)

A seemingly classic Prince Charming who is actually conspiring to eliminate both heirs to the Arendelle throne and claim it for himself.

Hans is a duplicitous, generic British-accented baddie revealed in the film’s final act, who gets some bonus evil points for taking advantage of Princess Anna’s emotions the way he does, purely to advance himself.

Demise by: Survives but is arrested and banished for his treachery.

Recommended for you: Best Animated Feature Oscar Winners Ranked

34. Alameda Slim – Home on the Range (2004)

An evil cattle rustler and conman who plans to cheat every rancher he can find out of their land.

Randy Quaid’s growling delivery and the character’s hilariously unconvincing Inspector Clouseau-level disguises aside, what makes Alameda Slim stand out is that he’s a rare villain who uses a combination of theft, foreclosure and cow-hypnotising yodelling to get what he wants.

Demise by: Survives, but his schemes and true identity as a rustler are exposed and the reward for his arrest is claimed.

33. Dr Jumba Jookiba – Lilo & Stitch (2002)

An alien mad scientist on the hunt for his dangerous but cute creation on Earth on the orders of the council who imprisoned him for his work.

Dr Jumba is probably the only character who never underestimates the cute blue title character because he was the one who genetically engineered “Experiment 626” and is fully aware of his destructive capabilities. He finds himself lower down this list for being bumbling and for having a late change of heart, eventually helping to protect Stitch when the council’s military arrives to complete his mission with extreme prejudice.

Demise by: Survives to live a fairly happy exile alongside Stitch on Earth.

In this Movie List from The Film Magazine, we’re counting down the most emotionally resonant, funny and important moments from Love Actually for these, the 10 Best Love Actually Moments.

Follow @thefilmagazine on Twitter.

10. Colin Goes to an American Bar

After deciding he is on the wrong continent for love, Colin Frissell (Kris Marshall) travels to America, because “any bar anywhere in America contains ten girls more beautiful and more likely to have sex with [him] than the whole of the United Kingdom”.

Sure enough, not one but three beautiful American women are charmed by his cute British accent and invite him to their place (after warning him that they only have one bed and no pyjamas).

Colin’s Christmas gets even merrier when they tell him that he hasn’t met their fourth housemate Harriet, and “she is the sexy one”.

9. So Much More Than a Bag

In a rush to buy an expensive gold necklace for the woman with whom he may or may not be having an affair, Harry (Alan Rickman) wants to grab it and go, but the shop assistant (Rowan Atkinson) has other plans when he agrees to have it gift wrapped.

After placing it in a box, he ties it with a bow before delicately wrapping it in cellophane. Rickman anxiously glances over his shoulder as Atkinson slides open a drawer to retrieve tiny, dried roses, which he sprinkles lovingly. Atkinson then meticulously crushes fresh lavender. An increasingly agitated Rickman urges the man to hurry, to which he agrees, before slowly attaching a large cinnamon stick with a ribbon. As Atkinson retrieves a pair of garden gloves to add some holly, an exasperated Rickman asks – “what else are you going to do? Dip it in yoghurt? Cover it in chocolate buttons?!” All the while, his wife Karen grows increasingly near.

In this Movie List from The Film Magazine, we’re looking at why this early 2000s film has held up for younger viewers, in this: 5 Reasons Elf Is a Gen Z Christmas Classic.

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1. Elf’s Use of Absurd Humor

Popular memes often dabble in some form of absurdist humor, which makes Elf’s use of it more relevant than outdated for a movie that is almost 20 years old. From the claymation animals to Buddy’s first experiences of New York, Elf illustrates the absurdity of the mundane.

On his trek from the North Pole to New York, Buddy encounters a raccoon, which he assumes will be as friendly as the claymation Arctic animals he’s used to. He is instead attacked by it. When he sees a diner with a sign that reads “World’s Best Cup of Coffee,” Buddy doesn’t hesitate to run in and enthusiastically congratulate them for the honor, to the bewilderment of customers and staff. 

From the spaghetti with maple syrup scene to Buddy’s getting drunk and breakdancing in the Empire State Building mail room, Elf is full of absurd moments that make for a hilarious and memorable movie.

2. Elf’s Quotability

In the era of TikTok “acting” and viral fancams of memorable scenes from films and TV shows, quotability is king. In my own town, a local boutique has a sign out front which reads “Six inch ribbon curls, honey. Six. Inches.”

While some films can fall victim to sacrificing plot for quotability, Elf’s plot is instead carried along by quotes like “You smell like beef and cheese. You don’t smell like Santa.” In the aforementioned case, the quote prompts Buddy to rip the fake beard from a mall Santa’s face and proceed to get into a fight with the imposter. This incident gets Buddy “fired” from his job at Gimbels, but drives him to seek out his younger half-brother, Michael (Daniel Tay), who ends up being one of Buddy’s biggest advocates through the film, especially to their dad Walter (James Caan) and Jovie. 

Recommended for you: 10 Best Home Alone Moments

Elf (2003)
Director: Jon Favreau
Screenwriter: David Berenbaum
Starring: Will Ferrell, James Caan, Bob Newhart, Zooey Deschanel, Ed Asner, Mary Steenburgen

Heart-warming, joyful and kind, Elf has become a timeless Christmas classic. The premise of a fully grown man dressed as an elf wandering around New York City in search of his birth father is one that could have made for a grotesque film, and yet thanks to the shared vision and unbridled devotion of its creators, this 2003 film remains as identifiable and rewatchable as ever. 

Written by David Berenbaum and directed by Jon Favreau, Elf earned $223.3million from a $33million budget, making it a certifiable box office hit. It is now considered one of the best Christmas films ever made. There are several reasons for this.

First and foremost, its star… 

Buddy was Will Ferrell’s breakout role and remains one of his most iconic performances. This was a star-making turn and led to Ferrell going from being an SNL cast member to one of the most beloved comedy actors in Hollywood. Vitally, to both Ferrell and 21st century comedy, Buddy has proven to be an outstanding and lasting protagonist. 

Without any context regarding his comedy background, Will Ferrell could easily look like any businessman. He looks average in the best way possible, and at first glance is the last person who would seem suited to playing an elf. And this makes sense: the whole point of the film, and his character’s reason for travelling to NYC, is that he doesn’t fit in with other elves and wants to find his biological family. Even when he loses the costume, Buddy the elf never disappears – he shines brightly against deeply cynical backgrounds such as grimy cafes and depressing offices. Ferrell never falters, he is equally as entertaining in a suit as he is in an elf costume.

Elf is, at its heart, about rediscovering your inner child to find happiness, and this starts with Will Ferrell treating New York like his own personal playground. From interacting with clueless people in the street (yes, the guy in the white beard and red track suit Buddy refers to as Santa was not an actor), to playing with a revolving door until he throws up, Buddy’s energy is immediately contagious.

While Will Ferrell’s star power makes the film, Jon Favreau’s visionary direction is responsible for the film’s timeless quality. Favreau had the hindsight to avoid relying on computer effects, instead employing the use of forced perspective to make Buddy appear bigger than the rest of the elves for each scene set in the North Pole. While CGI continuously improves and gets more realistic, to the point that films that are only five years old already look dated, forced perspective will always remain effective – practical effects that tricked the eye almost twenty years ago cannot age. The strength of this vision and effectiveness of this technique is even more impressive considering that this is Favreau’s sophomore film as a director (following Made). To this day, Jon Favreau’s talents as a filmmaker continue to shape the history of blockbuster cinema, with 2008’s Iron Man launching the MCU, a multi-billion-dollar franchise, and his recent work on Disney live-action remakes altering big studio release slates forever.

From costumes to set design, Elf is instantly recognisable. Favreau and Berenbaum both cite Rankin/Bass’ animated specials as a leading influence: while the writer was inspired by the animation’s innocence in his childhood, the director decided that this would also influence the look of the film. The most obvious influence comes in Elf’s stop motion animation scenes, each of which serve a vital purpose regarding Buddy’s characterisation, setting the tone for him being a memorable, charming and unusual protagonist. Leading strongly with this influence also smartly taps into the nostalgia of older audience members. Films are, after all, a communal art. Whenever a film can play on the nostalgia of a generation while being creative, it yields great results.

The heart of this film lies beyond the quality of its lead performance and the creativity of those behind the scenes however, instead settling squarely on the father and son journey – one inspired by Berenbaum’s own grief. In Elf as in life, the idea of a parent rejecting a child is a powerful one, especially when facing a character as innocent as Buddy. Yet Buddy is not jaded by the rejection of his father; he embraces him and continues to love him unconditionally throughout the film. While this, of course, leads to some hilarious scenes, it also causes heart-breaking confrontations. Much of the effectiveness of this narrative strand comes from actor James Caan, best known for his role as Sonny Corleone in The Godfather, who plays to his strengths by offering a jaded and importantly intimidating presence. He is both a stand-in for the more cynical members of the audience and a noteworthy oppositional force for Buddy to bounce off. As a result of this passion, talented writing and overall quality of performance, Buddy’s father’s final acceptance of his son remains stirring to this day.

The supporting roles were also impeccably cast. Zooey Deschanel is able to strike a chord as a disenchanted worker who slowly rediscovers the magic of Christmas, while Bob Newhart brings his trademark dry humour to the character Papa Elf, balancing Buddy’s instincts as his level-headed father figure. Perhaps most crucially Ed Asner, who played Santa Claus a total of eight times in his career, is a wonderfully comforting presence in the film, radiating the same warmth we all expect of a globe-trotting gift giver.

Thanks to the shared vision of its creators and a star-making lead performance, Elf is a modern classic. Against many a stumbling block in the creative process, this strange premise for a Christmas story has ultimately made for one of the most perfect examples of a timeless Christmas favourite.

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Written by Elisabetta Pulcini

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Twitter – @ElisabettaPul
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Promising Young Woman (2021)
Director: Emerald Fennell
Screenwriter: Emerald Fennell
Starring: Carey Mulligan, Bo Burnham, Alison Brie, Adam Brody, Jennifer Coolidge, Laverne Cox, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Molly Shannon, Max Greenfield, Chris Lowell

Statistics vary depending on location, but, on average, one in every five women will experience some form of sexual assault in their lifetime. It’s a staggeringly high percentage, but one many people will not find surprising. Sexual assault is a pandemic in its own right. Yet, instead of reporting the daily figures on prime time news each day, or orchestrating a worldwide effort to bring it to an end, we allow women to walk home with keys clenched between their knuckles as we redundantly remind them not to invite unwarranted sexual attention through their personal fashion preferences – as if this will be enough to keep them safe. 

When it happens to you, it doesn’t happen how you thought it might, and the world doesn’t react how you assumed it would. Just look at somebody like Brock Turner, who, after committing a violent sexual assault on an intoxicated fellow student – a crime ordinarily punishable with a fourteen-year sentence – served only three months in prison: the lenient verdict a product of white privilege and the judge’s own feeling that Brock, a swimming champion, would be negatively impacted by lengthy imprisonment. We live in a world where an accusation or conviction of assault is now deemed just as brutal and life-altering as assault itself; a dynamic Emerald Fennell explores the hypocrisies of in her debut feature, Promising Young Woman. In one scene, a so-called ‘nice guy’ suggests to Cassie, our promising young woman in question, that it’s a guy’s worst nightmare to be accused ‘like that’. To this, Cassie replies: ‘Can you guess what every woman’s worst nightmare is?’.

Cassandra Thomas (Carey Mulligan), a thirty-year-old barista and med-school dropout, comes to a stalemate with life. Consumed by a seven-year-old ‘incident’ involving her childhood friend Nina, Cassie isolates herself from the possibility of functioning like a regular person. We never hear the specifics of this incident; what exactly happened to Nina is left vague in an attempt to mimic the experience of disregard felt by actual victims of assault. Do you remember the name of Brock Turner’s victim? Instead, Cassie, like Frances McDormand’s Mildred in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, dedicates her time to tactically seeking out a form of, not revenge, but justice – a way to do something material with the pain of her trauma. To highlight that people capable of assault can look like anyone, be of any age and from any background, Fennell has Cassie loiter inside nightclubs, using herself as inebriated bait, to which predatory men, in all of their forms, gravitate. Cassie frightens the boys when she reveals herself to be sober – a fact many of them find to be a turn-off anyway. However, no matter how many deviant men she teaches a lesson (a notebook she keeps as record speaks to a high volume of them), the catharsis she yearns for never arrives. That is until a chance meeting with a former classmate, Ryan (Bo Burnham), provides Cassie with an access route to a more exact and tenacious form of vengeance. 

We follow Cassie as she comes up against the guilty faces of her past. She confronts them with manipulation, fear and threat, forcing them to acknowledge their roles not only within the sexual assault of her friend but within the system of rape culture as a whole; a system that fails to hold men accountable for their crimes. Promising Young Woman does this with tact, slowly dismantling the layers of shame-culture and victim-blaming that normalise sexual violence. Cassie’s plot for justice highlights all those responsible: from the perpetrators themselves to disbelieving classmates, and education professionals who choose to turn a blind eye and disregard their duty of care. Cassie comes for all genders and ages; anyone whose silence, prejudice or failure to act has long enabled the cycle to continue. The film encourages self-introspection, too, forcing us, with its nuanced exploration of these themes, to ask ourselves if our own actions and opinions have a place in the ruling toxicity of normalised sexual violence.

Fennell and costume designer Nancy Steiner – who received acclaim for her work on Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides – use style and fashion to subvert the typical expectation of a woman on a mission such as Cassie’s: blood, gore and practical dress, the classic symbology of the ‘revenge’ narrative, is actively lacking. Instead, Steiner dresses Cassie in bubble-gum pinks and pretty florals, her hair neat, her make-up done, her nails painted, her outfits beautifully executed with details and accessories to match. Fennell weaponises Cassie’s femininity and the effeminate connotations of the colour pink; the aesthetically pleasing stylisation of Cassie’s wardrobe serving as armour against the weaponry and semantics of rape culture.

The effort to subvert genre continues through savvy casting decisions. Men we usually associate as loveable and, more importantly, harmless, crop up throughout the film: millennial treasure and stand-up comic, Bo Burnham; silly and eccentric Max Greenfield of ‘New Girl’; Superbad’s McLovin aka Christopher Mintz-Plasse; the puppy-eyed Chris Lowell of ‘GLOW’, and teen heartthrob of ‘The O.C.’, Adam Brody. With the presence of these much-loved, lusted after men, Fennell toys with our preconceptions of what we expect males in (and surrounding) sexual violence narratives to look like – they can be anyone, any age, or people we know and even admire. Other supporting actors feel complimentary of the film’s aesthetic in a variety of ways. The decision to cast Jennifer Coolidge as Cassie’s Mother feels like a particular stroke of genius: her comedic, chick-flick legacy gifts the film a glamorous and nostalgic tone. Laverne Cox, Alison Brie and Connie Britton bring a concoction of talent; they are the mixer to a perfect, pink cocktail, respectively adding sweet, sour, and bitter flavours into the mix. 

However, by far the most crucial player is Carey Mulligan. Known for her exquisite character work in independent film (Paul Dano’s Wildlife, Lone Scherfig’s An Education), Mulligan often gravitates toward complex female characters. As Cassie, Mulligan makes moves to untangle the knots of Hollywood’s perception of femininity. Her characterisation work isn’t as black and white as a hero looking for revenge upon a villain. Instead, Cassie is messy; she pushes the boundaries; she steps out of the acceptable space female characters usually operate within. Mulligan explores these shades of grey expertly, dark and threatening when she needs to be but comical enough to keep up with Burnham’s effortless wit. Mulligan’s work here highlights just how much a woman must sacrifice in order to bring rapists to justice.

Fennell filters every detail through a highly exceptional and boldly cinematic narrative, exposing the very real-world double standards and gross judgemental attitudes surrounding rape. Even the film’s soundtrack, which includes Paris Hilton’s “Stars Are Blind’ and a sinister string version of Britney Spears’ ‘‘Toxic’’, works to exacerbate Fennell’s vision. Hilton and Spears have their sexuality and mental health discussed like cheap gossip on a global scale; the stories behind their music further highlights all women’s struggle for control over their agency. Fennell uses these details to rewrite the script and confront dismissive, ingrained attitudes to all things considered ‘girly’. 

Given the extent to which Promising Young Woman asks its audience to confront their beliefs and behaviour, the film will be a complicated watch for many. Yet, like it or not, it’s time we bring this conversation into the mainstream. Sexual assault doesn’t just happen to women as conventionally attractive as Margot Robbie; it’s an issue anyone can come into contact with. Let this film act as a means to silence dismissive voices and teach the importance of believing women.

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