Cassie Thomas (Carey Mulligan), much like Emerald Fennell’s splashy debut Promising Young Woman, is out to ruffle feathers. That is the point after all. A scintillating first feature, Promising Young Woman, which earned high critical marks and largely enthusiastic response during its Sundance bow, is a #MeToo revenge thriller that confronts date rape and sexual assault with a fearless, take-no-prisoners approach.

Though an implied history with sexual violence remains intentionally opaque through the earlier portions of the film, viewers are left to intuit that either Cassie or someone very close to her has been a victim of sexual assault. This violence has left a mark and informs every aspect of Cassie’s life. But rather than retreat into herself, she has become a feminist avenger, out to pop the bubble where male predatory habits find solace.

Made up like a sloppy “good-time girl” and pretending to be extremely intoxicated, Cassie hunts the hunters. She preys upon the predators. Her lipstick smeared, eyes all gaga, she is out to avenge. Set upon her self-assigned mission to cleanse, Cassie seeks to expunge the cultural toxicity that allows “good guys” to take advantage of women, be that at parties, bars, clubs, bachelor parties, or otherwise. She does this by making herself the mark. What she does from there is part of the film’s appeal. Enablers who reinforce a patriarchal system that lets the “good guys” off free and shames “drunken party girls” into submission are equally within her crosshairs. No one, and I mean no one, gets off with a pass.

A bit of a deranged hermit, Cassie lives to set the scales straight and not much else. After dropping out of med school and moving back in with her disappointed parents, her inner life and outer ambitions have seemed to wither and die on the vine, in clear conjunction with how the lives of abuse survivors are so often affected and crippled. Fennell uses the backdrop of cultural indifference as a whetstone to sharpen her commentary about the far-reaching damage dealt by sexual assault. Subtlety is neither her aim nor what she delivers and Promising Young Woman cranks up the pulpy appeal, be that through the bubblegum-colored sets and wardrobes or the female-power-pop-powered soundtrack, which includes an ironic playlist of songs such as Paris Hilton’s “Stars Are Blind”, Charli XCX “Boys”, a winky revision of “It’s Raining Men” and a haunting instrumental cover of Brittany Spear’s “Toxic”.

Mulligan proves more than up to the challenge of bringing the multidimensional Cassie to life, injecting a nervy misanthropy into the character in her withdrawn public life that blooms into a towering and frightening pillar of empowerment when she cedes control back from her would-be assaulters. There’s a certain psychosis that hovers around Cassie, if not plainly infecting her, that makes her an interesting, complexly-written antihero. Fennell allows this to blossom into moments that are darkly funny or starkly disturbing, suspending viewers in a state of anxious anticipation for what fresh hell waits around the next corner.

Unraveling this idea of a hellbent female avenger, the script (also from Fennell) is challenging, button-pushing, and quite often very dark. There are times when Cassie may not be the most sympathetic protagonist but we’re never in doubt about the purity of her cause nor Mulligan’s textured commitment to the role. An all-star supporting cast that includes a never-better Bo Burnham, Laverne Cox, Alison Brie, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Jennifer Coolidge, Sam Richardson, Connie Britton, Molly Shannon, Max Greenfield, and Adam Brody adds dimension to the morally-vacuous scrum that Fennell has crafted where no one is quite who they seem and few shoulder the weight of responsibility for their past deeds.

There are serious issues at the center of Promising Young Woman that the film clearly wants to confront but Fennell has no problem leaning into B-movie appeals to get that point across. The film shines in executing that juggling act: begging conversation about how we as a society address sexual assault while also delighting in the trashy appeal of comeuppance and cunning acts of vengeance. Much like Cassie, we want blood. We’re trained to want that in a movie, though we may turn away and admonish it in real life. But Promising Young Woman may just make you careful what you wish for.

CONCLUSION: A defiant, bold, and color-splashed debut, ‘Promising Young Adult’ sees writer-director Emerald Fennell loudly announce herself as someone to watch while veteran badass Carey Mulligan gives one of the best performances of her career as an impacted survivor out for revenge served cold AF.