Camila Mendes and Maya Hawke Are Out for Payback in First Trailer for Netflix’s Do Revenge

If there’s one elemental story that never goes out of fashion when it comes to movie scripts, it’s some good old-fashioned revenge. It was true in 1951 when Alfred Hitchcock directed his classic Strangers on a Train, and it’s still true today in 2022, when Netflix’s latest original film is more or less inspired by the same sort of premise. The curiously titled Do Revenge stars Riverdale’s Camila Mendes and Stranger Things breakout Maya Hawke, and dropped its first full trailer on the web today, promising Mean Girls mayhem and then some. Actually, the film has graces us with one of the more ridiculously stylized synopses the Netflix marketing machine has ever written:

After a clandestine run-in, Drea (Alpha, fallen it girl played by Camila Mendes) and Eleanor (beta, new alt girl played by Maya Hawke) team up to go after each other’s tormentors. Do Revenge is a subverted Hitchcock-ian dark comedy featuring the scariest protagonists of all: teenage girls.

Where to even start with that? Describing the girls as “alpha” and “beta,” or “it girl” and “alt girl”? The phrase “subverted Hitchcock-ian dark comedy,” which seems to misunderstand exactly what the word “subverted” means? It’s not a one-off, either, given that the Wikipedia entry refers to the film as a “subverted dark comedy,” without seemingly realizing this would imply the movie is not dark, or not a comedy. But hey, we’re probably expecting too much of Netflix at this point, I guess.

Do Revenge is directed by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, the creator of MTV’s Sweet/Vicious, and co-writer of Marvel’s recent Thor: Love and Thunder alongside Taika Waititi. In addition to rising star Hawke and the 28-year-old Mendes, still playing a high school student, the supporting cast includes Rish Shah, Talia Ryder, Jonathan Daviss, Maia Reficco, Paris Berelc, Alisha Boe and Sophie Turner. Look for it to hit Netflix on Sept. 16, 2022, if you’re not too turned off by “subverted dark comedy.”