“Do Revenge” has all the makings of a film that will garner attention, combining a “Mean Girls” vibe with the stars of two popular teen franchises in Camila Mendes (“Riverdale”) and Maya Hawke (“Stranger Things”). It’s too bad the Netflix movie doesn’t match those qualities, offering a mishmash of homages that’s mildly diverting but can’t ace the final. The most obvious inspiration in this second film from director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (Netflix’s “Someone Great”) would be Alfred Hitchcock’s oft-copied “Strangers on a Train.”
Yet the plot does not pursue this idea with much conviction, which might explain why it runs out of steam down the stretch. The movie also owes debts to a lot of other teen fare, such as Cruel Intentions (1998), itself an adaptation of the French novel that became Dangerous Liaisons (1988). Mostly, it’s a story of unlikely friendship set against the backdrop of another private school where the parties make Roman bacchanals seem restrained and pale by comparison. The cast is also loaded with talent from other franchises who are also getting a little too grown up to be playing high-school students much longer including Austin Abrams (Euphoria), Alisha Boe (13 Reasons Why) and Sophie Turner (Game of Thrones).
Depicting themselves as “two injured troopers on the front line of youth,” Mendes’ Drea is the sovereign honey bee at the highest point of the social layers, notwithstanding being a grant understudy in this domain of riches and honor. She guides her displeasure at marvelous ex Max (Abrams), who released an unequivocal tape of her, while Hawke’s Eleanor has breast fed a repressed hostility against a young lady who evened out a deceitful complaint against her throughout exposing her.
“In this story nothing is at appears,” Drea cautions in voiceover close to the start, which ought to be a hint of turns to come, as she and Eleanor alternate filling in as storyteller, which works until, close to the end, it doesn’t.
Netflix has wrung impressive accomplishment out of the youngster type, including sentiment to spine chillers, including past tasks that have offered new takes on recognizable stories like “Cyrano de Bergerac.” Yet “Do Retribution” begins down that way prior to taking a critical diversion – a system that isn’t terrible in principle however loses something in the execution.
Truly, the projecting presumably addresses a portion of the fight, and Mendes and Hawke have a strong exhibit, on the off chance that one that doesn’t leave much from their series personas.
Of course, “Do Retribution” isn’t tied in with extending shows yet rather essentially finding one more flaw on what has turned into a laid out equation. That’s what it does, yet for a film where the characters talk frequently about their Elite level desires, imaginatively talking it lands more in the security school class.
“Do Vengeance” debuts September 16 on Netflix.
