Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Do Revenge’ on Netflix, Where High School Meets Hitchcock

After making a splash in 2019 with her heartfelt directorial debut Someone Great, writer-director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson has teamed up with Netflix once again for her new teen comedy, Do Revenge. Although both films probe the intricacies of female relationships, Do Revenge is preoccupied with the viciousness of teen girlhood. Starring established teen drama stars (Riverdale’s Camila Mendes and Stranger Things’ Maya Hawke), the film imbues a classic Hitchcock story with the sickly sweet aesthetics of a high school revenge tale.

DO REVENGE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

\The Gist: On the cusp of her senior year at Miami’s prestigious Rosehill High School, scholarship student-turned-queen bee Drea Torres (Mendes) seems to have it all: A hot boyfriend, the adoration of her peers, and a clear path to Yale. But after her boyfriend Max (Euphoria’s Austin Abrams) leaks her sex tape, Drea finds her picture-perfect life snatched away overnight.

Enter Eleanor (Hawke), a misfit new girl with an enemy of her own: Carissa (Ava Capri), a former summer camp crush who outed Eleanor and falsely painted her as a queer predator.

Fed up with their circumstances, the girls decide to go after each other’s bullies and, as the somewhat confusing title suggests, “do revenge.”

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Do Revenge is loosely inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s 1951 film Strangers on a Train, in which a psychopath suggests that he and his fellow train passenger “exchange” murders so that neither will be caught. Who exactly is the psychopath in Robinson’s movie? You’ll have to watch the movie to find out, but here’s a tip — one character can be seen reading the original Strangers on a Train novel in an early scene.

Still, the bulk of Do Revenge is inspired by the acerbic, classic teen films of the ’80s and ‘90s, from Heathers to Jawbreaker to Clueless. In a particularly meta touch, Cruel Intentions star Sarah Michelle Gellar has a small but memorable role as Rosehill’s principal.

Performance Worth Watching: Fresh off another seismic season of Stranger Things, Maya Hawke builds upon the effortless charm that propelled her to breakout stardom on the Netflix series. Eleanor’s sharp edges give Hawke the chance to show off even more of her range in a charismatic leading role.

Memorable Dialogue: After Max is exposed for infidelity, he and his new girlfriend Tara (Alisha Boe) do some very Gen Z damage control by insisting that the couple is actually ethically nonmonogamous, and painting anyone who objects as a hypocrite who can’t recognize their bravery in “transcending heteronormative structures.”

“Y’all, we’re young. We’re fluid. We should be out there eating ass, dawg,” Max’s friend Elliott (J.D.) proclaims. “This is America. We finna eat any ass we want, y’all.”

The entire bit is hilarious, and an effective summation of the ways in which Zoomers can recognize and even weaponize performative activism to serve their own means.

Sex and Skin: We only see the beginning of the intimate video that Drea sends to Max at the beginning of the film. Later, she receives some clunky off-screen cunnilingus while distractedly poring over Instagram for the latest developments in her revenge scheme. Nothing too steamy here!

Our Take: While Do Revenge isn’t quite sharp enough to be as timeless as the teen classics it draws from, Robinson’s sophomore film is still well-worth a watch. The ecosystem of Do Revenge’s cutthroat private school is shrewdly updated to reflect the culture in which actual teenagers now find themselves — the male villain isn’t a brooding jock, but a self-proclaimed feminist whose androgynous fashion sense was directly inspired by Harry Styles. The student body itself is noticeably less white and straight than the teen films of yesteryear, centering on a working-class Latina and a young queer woman whose grappling with their own identities is neither erased nor character-defining.

The film strikes a careful balance between appealing to Gen Z culture and hewing from well-loved teen movie tropes, providing entry points that extend beyond its target audience. Sure, the characters drop Taylor Swift references and joke about the ways in which they want their headmaster to murder them as a sign of admiration, but it’s drowning in topical references that are bound to fade within the next five years.

Do Revenge balances this well with the music choices, which blend contemporary hits from Billie Eilish, MUNA, and Olivia Rodrigo with older tracks like “How Bizarre” and “Kids in America” (which, yes, is a total Clueless reference).

As for the performances, Mendes and Hawke share a breezy chemistry that eventually castasizes into something more brittle. It’s more than a little reminiscent of the intense, all-consuming, and often heartbreaking relationships in which teenage girls often find themselves. In one of her first breakout, non-Riverdale starring roles in years, Mendes confidently shoulders the film’s twists and turns, getting the chance to portray a wounded vulnerability that she rarely gets to embody as Veronica Lodge. Likewise, Hawke is able to play a darker take on the quippy, sarcastic teen misfit that so endeared her to audiences on Stranger Things.

It helps that the ensemble cast is stacked with budding Gen Z talent: Euphoria scene-stealer Abrams, indie film darling Talia Ryder, Outer Banks’ J.D., and Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin’s Maia Reficco all appear in key supporting roles.

Admittedly, Do Revenge stumbles in its last act, in which a slew of twists are unfurled and tied in neat bows that feel more like studio notes than meaningful dramatic arcs. But at less than two hours, it’s easy enough to forgive a film that’s, above all else, a fun, absorbing homage to the Hitchcock-level suspense that is high school.

Our Call: STREAM IT. While some of the film’s late-stage twists don’t feel entirely earned, Do Revenge is an entertaining, Gen Z-style update to the tart teen classics of the ‘90s.

Abby Monteil is a New York-based writer. Her work has also appeared in The Daily Beast, Insider, Them, Thrillist, Elite Daily, and others.