- The entire premise of the movie could count as this, as Cassie tries to avenge her best friend's rape and catch would be rapists, the fact that the men could have come across an actual drunken woman instead of Cassie is disturbing.
- Cassie tricking Madison into thinking that she's been raped. To make things worse, Cassie is perfectly willing to ignore her messages for days afterwards. She only relents and tells her the truth when Madison confronts her in person, visibly traumatized. Even if she was a victim-blaming Jerkass, Cassie weaponizing Madison's fear and vulnerability like that borders on Disproportionate Retribution.
- Cassie goes one step further with her next target; making the dean think her own daughter is about to be raped. The dean is understandably horrified by this and, unlike with Madison, it's made clear that Cassie is enjoying the whole thing. Granted, she knows that the dean's daughter is safe, but still...
- Cassie's death by suffocation by Al is chilling, as is their confrontation prior to it. To add on, Emerald Fennell specifically timed the suffocation scene to be two and a half minutes, the time her father-in-law says it takes to smother someone.
- By making it realistically long the scene becomes incredibly difficult to watch and hammers home to the viewer that at a certain point Al had well and truly crossed the line from panicked self defense to intentional killing - he could have backed off several times, especially when Cassie stopped moving and she would have survived. Worse still the viewer sees her move her arms and legs several times in a futile attempt to breathe, but once Al covers her face and murders her the viewer never sees her face again. And to top it all off, Al would rather cover up the murder by calling a friend to help him dispose of the body than own up to what he'd done to both Cassie and Nina - then get married as though nothing had happened in the next scene.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/PromisingYoungWoman
FollowingNightmare Fuel / Promising Young Woman
Go To
