“Do Revenge” narratively portrays the story of Drea Torres (Camila Mendes), who is the “it girl” of Rosehill Country Day high school. She is friends with the most beautiful people in the school, i.e., Tara, Elliot, Meghan, and Montana. Her boyfriend is the senior class president, Max (Austin Abrams). And she’s all set to segue into the next stage of her life at Yale. But her dreams and her reality go down the gutter after Max “allegedly” leaks a raunchy video of Drea, and she retaliates by punching him in front of everyone. While spending her summer vacation at a tennis camp, Drea comes across a girl named Eleanor (Maya Hawke). She relates to her story about being outed as a lesbian predator by her ex-crush, Carissa (Ava Capri). As Carissa, Max, Drea, and Eleanor go to the same school, Drea asks Eleanor to fulfill her revenge fantasies about Max, while she goes after Carissa on Eleanor’s behalf. That way, no one will be able to directly accuse them of acting vindictively.

Drea and Eleanor come up with the plan to expose Carissa and Max in one fell swoop. After finding out that Carissa is growing mushrooms and marijuana plants in her green room, they take some of it out and spike the soup that’ll be served at the Senior Ring Ceremony. That causes everyone, except for Drea and Eleanor, to lose their minds. This gives the girls the opportunity to steal Max’s phone and check out all the girls he’s cheating with. While Eleanor hacks into the phone, Drea anonymously lets the headmaster (Sarah Michelle Gellar) know about the greenhouse. This obviously leads to Carissa’s expulsion. Later on, while announcing the Valentine’s Self-Love Palooza, Eleanor leaks the information that Max has been cheating on Tara with every other girl in the school. This ruins his feminist image and completes Drea’s revenge plan.

But wait! Tara comes up with a plan to spread the message that Max isn’t actually cheating on her. They are apparently in an ethically non-monogamy relationship. Which is a roundabout way of saying that they are polysexual. They start to put the blame on the students for reacting too harshly and say that the students are governed by some old-school ideas of heteronormative relationships. They even go to the extent of saying that since America is a free country, they shouldn’t limit themselves to one partner and just go out with anyone who is willing to sleep with them. Hence, sooner than later, the narrative turns from “Max is a cheating piece of crap” to “Max is in an open relationship, so everyone has a shot of getting intimate with him.” And, to make matters worse for Drea, her Yale application is also rejected.

See More: ‘Do Revenge’ Review: Essentially ‘Student of the Year’, But Better Because Of Camila Mendes & Maya Hawke

Eleanor comes up with a counter-plan to not just go after Max but go after all of them. Drea agrees because she thinks that everyone should pay for the consequences of their actions, especially after messing with her Yale application. Yes, she thinks that Max, along with his group, sent the magazine talking about how Drea assaulted him, to Yale. Anyway, coming back to the plot, Drea tells Eleanor that every year there’s something called the Admissions Party. It’s “a night of pure debauchery,” and students go in there without any cell phones. This means what happens at the Admissions Party stays at the Admissions Party. And the only way to get in there is if a student has an Ivy League admission letter. Lucky for Eleanor, she apparently has two. So, she has to go in there, expose what’s happening in there, draw out Max, and then Drea is going to make him admit that he leaked that raunchy video of hers.

However, things go a little differently. Max and the rest of them throw Eleanor a big birthday party, something that Drea forgets. Enraged out of her mind, Drea shows up at Eleanor’s party and asks her why she’s mingling with Max and his group. Eleanor says that she’s now on Max’s side because Drea didn’t even remember her birthday, and, hence, she feels that Drea is friends with her because she’s useful. They break up. Later that night, Drea finds out that her car is not working. The mechanic says that someone must’ve taken out her spark plug, just like the last time it stopped working. Based on a hunch, she pays Carissa a visit. She reminds Drea that she’s the one who spread the rumor that Eleanor (who used to go by the name Nora) was a predator when she came out to Drea when they were 13. So, she changed her name, met Drea at tennis camp, took out her car’s spark plug to give her a ride, and proceeded to cause Drea’s downfall a second time.

Eleanor explains that she wanted to stop her plan of reminding Drea that she is the one behind everything that she had to go through. She says that, for a moment, she thought that Drea had changed, and she didn’t want to hurt her anymore. But, when Drea broke into her birthday party, she realized that she was still the same old Drea Torres. In fact, after Drea returns home, Eleanor pays her a visit to explain everything to her and what’s going to happen. She says that, due to Drea’s little rumor, she essentially went into a deep depression. And the worst part about it all is that Drea doesn’t even remember causing this level of damage to Eleanor. So, in order to ensure that Drea lives with her pain forever, Eleanor orders her to go to the Admissions Party and force everyone to do the craziest stuff ever. Then, Eleanor is going to leak that video via an IP that’ll be traced to Drea’s computer, thereby leading to the whole school’s undoing.

Drea initially refuses to do it. Hence, Eleanor threatens her by saying that she’ll frame her mother for having drugs and ruin her career. She also says that she has told Russ (Rish Shah), Drea’s current boyfriend, everything she has done to Carissa. When Drea rushes to Russ to tell him the truth, Eleanor totals her car and sends her to the hospital. Russ reveals that he hasn’t received any information about Carissa from Eleanor. This means that Eleanor lied about that so that Drea would expose herself on her own. And that’s what she does. After Russ leaves, because he’s obviously disappointed by the revelation that Drea is diabolical, Eleanor shows up to tell her that she caused the accident for a reason. She knows that, out of sympathy for her injury, Tara and the rest are going to invite her to the Admissions Party, which is apparently easier than forging a fake Ivy League college admission letter, I suppose. As predicted by Eleanor, that is exactly what happens, and Drea gets into the party.

At the party, Eleanor puts a brooch (with a hidden camera in it) on Drea’s dress to record everything that goes on at the party. When Max and his friends start to do cocaine, Eleanor coaxes Drea to do some as well, even if she doesn’t want to. But Drea turns the tables by reminding everyone about her Nosy Nora days and that she is in love with Max’s sister, Gabbi (Talia Ryder). That evidently gets to Eleanor, and she exits the room. Drea goes after her and apologizes for saying that. Additionally, she admits that she doesn’t want to get back at Eleanor because she thinks she’s the only friend she has. And if she had the power to travel back in time and undo what she did to Eleanor, she would. Max overhears all this and reveals that he has accessed Drea and Eleanor’s phones (that they had submitted before entering the party). Hence, he knows that they are in cahoots with each other, and he intends to destroy both of their futures.

Then Max makes the mistake of telling Drea’s whole backstory to Eleanor (and reminding Drea as well) just to explain why he leaked that video. As per Max, he did it because Drea was never thankful to him for giving her access to everything that helped her climb the school’s social ladder. But the reasoning doesn’t really matter at this point because, after Max leaves the scene, Eleanor reveals that she had a hidden camera on her dress all this time and she has recorded Max’s confession. They hug it out and then proceed to screen the video of Max admitting that he was the one behind the video leak. One by one, everyone at the party starts to boo him. He goes outside, falls to his knees, and essentially accepts his defeat. After that, Eleanor and Drea go have a drink together on a beach. The headmaster informs Drea that Yale has an opening because Max’s application has been rejected. However, Drea says she doesn’t want to go there anymore because she is a different person now.

Before the credits roll, Drea and Eleanor do their version of driving into the sunset. During the credits, we see Drea getting back with Russ, while Eleanor gets back with Gabbi. And then we see Max at a group therapy that’s titled “Masculinity Examined: How to Untangle the Toxic Roots of Patriarchy.” Now, if you are thinking about taking any lessons from “Do Revenge,” please don’t. It’s a movie that says, “teenage girls are psychopaths” and shows adult actors playing teenagers just so that they can be sexualized to kingdom come. Enjoy all the backbiting and the performances by the talented cast and critique it for, and I am saying this at the cost of repeating myself, sexualizing teenagers. Nobody’s asking for realism from teenage dramas. However, no one is asking filmmakers to come up with a reality where 17-year-olds act irresponsibly as well. So, let’s put a stop to that as soon as possible and return to analyzing 90’s movie tropes, femininity, and patriarchy through the eyes of adults.

“Do Revenge” is a 2022 Drama Comedy film directed by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson.

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