ENTERTAINMENT NOW

Carey Mulligan Goes on a Rampage in the Promising Young Woman Trailer

It’s the first feature from ‘Killing Eve’ showrunner Emerald Fennell.

by Jocelyn Silver

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Focus Features/YouTube

Carey Mulligan stars in a new film written and directed by Killing Eve showrunner Emerald Fennell (who also appears as a young Camilla Parker Bowles on season three of The Crown). Fennell’s film, Promising Young Woman, stars Mulligan as a woman out for revenge after an unexpected event derails her once-promising future. It’s a thriller, and a press release describes the flick as a “a delicious new take on revenge.”

The trailer opens with a bang: Mulligan’s Cassie slouches in a club, and a man (played by the much-beloved Adam Brody) comes over to see if she’s alright. He takes her home, she passes out in his bed, and it looks like the beginning of an all-too familiar tale of sexual assault. But then a lucid Cassie pops up. All is not what it seems.

The plot follows Cassie as she delivers retribution to men for an unexplained event in her past, one that caused her to drop out of medical school. “Every week I go to a club,” Mulligan narrates. “I act like I’m too drunk to stand. And a nice guy comes over to see if I’m ok.”

She is. But they probably won’t be. The electrifying trailer follows Cassie as she gets taken home by various men (including Christopher Mintz-Plasse, aka Superbad’s McLovin), all of whom don’t like to think of themselves as predators.

“I’m a nice guy,” Mintz-Plasse protests.

“Are you?” asks Mulligan, menacingly.

The clip, set to a violin playing Britney Spears’ “Toxic,” also features snippets of an uncaring administrator (Connie Britton) who brushes aside Cassie’s unnamed claims, and an indignant frat boy-type (Chris Lowell) who dodges an accusation.

Promising Young Woman is Fennell’s first feature, and it’s set to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January, with a release date set for April 17th, 2020. The trailer debuted to quite the enthusiastic response. Check it out, below.