A Gen Z, John Tucker Must Die take on Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers On a Train, Do Revenge is a candy-coated tale of, well…revenge. It’s a pastel-colored Machavellian story of teenage subterfuge centered on two unlikely friends, Drea (Camila Mendes) and Eleanor (Maya Hawke).

Drea has made herself the perfect popular girl of Rosehill, a prestigious private high school. Unlike the rest of the kids at the school, Drea is not rich. She’s attending on a scholarship, but has quickly climbed her way to the top of the social ladder to be on equal footing with the most entitled. Drea caps off her picture-perfect persona by dating Max (Austin Abrams), the hottest boy in school. All this comes crashing down when a private video Drea sent to Max goes viral in the school.

Over the summer, Drea works at a tennis camp where her path crosses with Eleanor. The two commiserate over their past relationships. Drea tells Eleanor about Max, and Eleanor confides that when she was thirteen she came out to a girl named Carissa (Ava Capri) at summer camp and Carissa spread a rumor that Eleanor forced herself on her. Quickly, Eleanor and Drea realize they have a lot in common, especially when Eleanor admits she’s transferring to Rosehill in the fall. The unlikely duo discover that they’re the solution to each other’s troubles: no one knows they’re friends and no one will suspect a thing when they right some wrongs.

The dialogue has some of the quippiness of Diablo Cody’s genre-defining Juno and is reminiscent of a ’90s teen rom com, despite the prevalence of technology. Do Revenge feels like a throwback in the best sense. Despite being so aggressively now, the film is classic. Not only because of its Hitchcockian roots, but in the wide array of songs that make up the soundtrack. “Kids in America,” a strings version of “How Bizarre,” and “The Impression That I Get” harken back to the rom coms of yesteryear. Casting a famed 90s star as Rosehill’s headmaster is simply the icing on the cake.

Equal parts fun-filled revenge romp and social critique, Do Revenge is a perfect time capsule for 2022. That’s not to say that the film will feel outdated in a few years (although the one Taylor Swift lyric reference has already aged poorly). Quite the opposite. Do Revenge has the potential to be a cult classic equal to the likes of She’s All That and Jennifer’s Body. Teenage emotions are timeless, and as Eleanor so eloquently puts it, “teenage girls are psychopaths.”

Do Revenge has moments of Heathers and the more recent Thoroughbreds, but aesthetically falls in line with Clueless. The production design and costumes are a sight to behold, and Mendes and Hawke are deliciously deceitful in their prim and proper pastel berets. The script, co-written by Celeste Ballard and director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, is jam-packed with twists and turns before an unveiling that Hitchcock himself would be proud of.

So much of what makes Do Revenge an interesting topic of conversation lies in the grand reveals themselves and the way the plot seems to upend itself multiple times. However, to discuss these revelations would be to rob the viewer of their first watch. The film touches hot-button topics like revenge porn, toxic masculinity, bullying, homophobia, performative wokeness, and the current generation’s obsession with cultivating an image. Perhaps more than the generations prior, Gen Z teens are concerned with how they are perceived in every facet of their lives. Thanks to social media, every person is a brand with an image that must be meticulously created and maintained. Do Revenge proves how easy it is for those perfect images to be shattered.

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