Leslie Lanxinger

Dead on accurate. This is one of the best films I've seen all year. Some critics are calling it a failed revenge movie, but the brilliance of this film is that revenge isn't the point. Carey Mulligan's incredible portrayal of protagonist Cassandra knows that revenge isn't the point, because she goes out looking for it every night and finds her life spiraling deeper and deeper into emptiness. Halfway through the film she begins to understand that remorse might be the point: a point that she is desperately searching for and rarely finds, but had there been more of it, there might have been some redemption, both for Cassandra and for her complicit 'victims'. The variations of defensiveness, knee-jerk aggression, and overreaching attempts at self-justification that these 'victims' display were so realistic (and so damned well acted) that there were times when I felt physically ill. This movie is a deep dive into the wretched weakness of human nature- showing how truly villainous we can be in our desperate need to always paint ourselves as heroic. Accountability and remorse are the only kind of catharsis that can heal, but that kind of accountability is nuanced and ugly and complicated. Most movies that deal with this subject matter take an easier path, because revenge feels sweeter and easier to swallow.