With 2020 being such an unprecedented year at theaters thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, there were many movies that audiences may not have had the opportunity to watch in theaters or were perhaps waiting for streaming for the chance to settle in safely at home. Now, for those who were waiting for one of the best films of last year to hit streaming, that time has finally arrived. Promising Young Woman is finally streaming on HBO Max.
Directed by Emerald Fennell (Killing Eve), the film stars Carey Mulligan as Cassie, someone everyone said was a promising young woman… until a mysterious event abruptly derailed her future. But nothing in Cassie’s life is what it appears to be: she’s wickedly smart, tantalizingly cunning, and she’s living a secret double life by night. Now, an unexpected encounter is about to give Cassie a chance to right the wrongs of the past in this thrilling and wildly entertaining story.
The film was a critical success and landed on many Best of 2020 lists as well as garnered many award nominations, including nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Film Editing, and Best Original Screenplay at the 93rd Academy Award – and the film won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.
“I grew up in a world where, in movies, it was normal to see men getting girls drunk to sleep with them or girls waking up not knowing what has happened the night before and going on a ‘walk of shame,'” Fennell shared with Yahoo Entertainment. “It was just part of the culture. It was always troubling to me, but now that I’m older I’ve become much more aware of how it was totally normalized on screen. Boys were completely protected, and the girls were just expected to shut up or laugh it off.”
She continued, “I’ve always been interested in why good people do bad things and what happens when people who think they’re good realize they’re bad. It’s kind of what Cassie is out to prove. Her journey is much more troubling, in many ways, from the traditional violent revenge genre. She’s confronting the people in her life with the worst thing, which is waking up thinking they’re good and they’re not. They’re actually really bad-and she’s going to show them why. That’s horrifying.”
Promising Young Woman is now available to stream on HBO Max.