Review of Do Revenge, directed by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson

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This is another one of those blog posts where I’m revisiting movies I watched a while ago. I have a huge backlog of blog posts to get through these days, hence the need to space out these posts. It’s a lot of work! I am writing this review in December 2024, but it probably won’t come out until around May 2025.

I wanted to revisit Do Revenge, which is a movie that I reviewed over at MovieWeb. I worked as a film critic and interviewer there for almost three years, and I even got to interview Camila Mendes when she was doing press with her boyfriend for Musica!

I thought she was so sweet, which is why I also came back to this movie eventually. I liked it a lot the first watch, when it first came out, and I wanted to see if it stood the test of time for me.

Alright, this introduction is getting a bit long, so let’s get into the crux of this blog post! I don’t want to ramble too much, especially as you might get bored.

A scholarship student at an elite private high school in Miami gets tangled up in the world of the elites attending said school.

Our main character in this movie is Drea, who attends an elite private school in Miami. She’s on a scholarship, but everyone doesn’t like her after a video she sent her boyfriend, Max, is leaked online. That video was a bit too intimate for public consumption, effectively turning Drea into a pariah, despite her being a bit of a sociopath to begin with.

She breaks up with Max because she believes it was him who leaked the video, and summer comes. Drea signs up to work at a tennis camp, where she meets a girl named Eleanor. Eleanor is transferring to her school in the fall, comes from a wealthy pedigree, and has a bit of a similar story apparently. She kissed a girl at a summer camp year prior, and that became her social downfall.

The two then decide to collaborate and get revenge on the people who screwed them over. Eleanor gets a makeover from her usual tomboy appearance, and then she becomes friends with Drea’s old friend group. Drea then works at the school farm to befriend the girl Eleanor kissed, Carissa, and then also becomes friends with an unpopular student named Russ.

When Max throws a party and Eleanor is invited, she realizes he’s already cheating on his new girlfriend. Drea, on her own mission, steals Carissa’s keys and discovers weed and mushrooms are being grown in the school greenhouse. She takes those and at the school’s Ring Ceremony for seniors, she puts the mushrooms and weed into her classmates’ food.

Her plan is to get Max’s phone to find out what really happened, then gives an anonymous tip to the school’s headmaster about what is going on. Carissa is expelled and sent to rehab, and when she gets ahold of Max’s phone, Eleanor and she discover that Max is basically a womanizer.

She uses what she finds to expose him to the student body, but Max curves it so that he pretends to be polyamorous, making them the newest trend in school. Drea, who has been so bent on revenge, is rejected from Yale, and she decides that her new path is to wreck everyone she was once friends with at the school’s Admission Party for future Ivy Leaguers accepted.

At the same time, Eleanor is cruising with her popularity. On her birthday the popular group decides to surprise her, but when Drea shows up at the same time, it almost screws over their entire plan. They get into a fight, and Eleanor says that Max probably didn’t leak the video, effectively ending their plan. But Eleanor’s girlfriend, Max’s sister, breaks up with her when she hears this.

After her car is sabotaged at the tennis camp, Drea makes a visit to Carissa in rehab. It’s there Drea realizes that Eleanor is someone she screwed over in the past and outed, and she goes to confront Eleanor. Turns out Eleanor was trying to screw her over this entire time because of what Drea did, and now she’s threatening Drea’s mother for drug posession.

She then wrecks Drea’s car and sends her to the hospital in an attempt to get her into the Admissions Party, and she tells Russ about what Drea did. At the party Drea tries to out Eleanor, but then apologizes to her, leading to them making up. Max then confesses he leaked the video, which Eleanor films secretly, and then everyone turns against Max after that is made public.

He is expelled, and his Yale spot is given to Drea. She says no and makes up with Russ instead. Eleanor and the sister get back together, while Max is put into a support group for men who have a nasty streak of toxic masculinity.

Overall Thoughts

This is the perfect homage to teen girl movies past, especially with the dark comedy elements. Both of our main characters are technically very unlikable, but we’re still rooting for them anyways in the long run. They’ve got a grudge and vendetta to fulfill, and they’re on a mission.

I love dark comedies, so I was cackling. It’s a reminder of Heathers and how good that movie was. Teen movies these days haven’t been hitting as good as I want them to, so I’m glad for the creator of this film for taking a risk. The cast also was excellent in their roles, and I was a fan of how Abrams specifically played his character.

Anyways, if you haven’t seen this already, go watch it. Don’t just read a summary: go experience the movie and how it tells its story. It’s worth it.

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