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I want to tell you my secret now.

I see death.

Silent freed is people.

No, I am the father.

Oh, gosh, right.

What's in the box? What's in the box? You get it! You blew it up! Damn you all the hell!

Hello and welcome to another Slate's spoiler special podcast. I'm Dana Stevens, Slate's movie critic. And today we're going to be spoiling Emerald Fennell's directorial debut, promising young woman starring Carrie Mulligan. It's a really strange and controversial movie that's extremely twist-dependent, so it really needed to be spoiled. And I'm glad we're doing it. Joining me to spoil is Slate staff writer Karen Hahn. Hey, Karen. Hi, thank you so much for having me on for this. Yeah, I think this is the first time we've spoiled a movie together that I can remember, isn't it? Yeah, that's correct. A good one to start with. Yeah, yeah. This is a movie that was made to be talked about and possibly fought about. Yeah, I don't think you reviewed it. Did you? I didn't see you any writing

on slate by you on this movie. No. I was trying to get an interview, but I was not, I haven't done any other writing on it. Yeah. All right. So then this is your chance to learn it all out. What I normally do at the beginning of these, since the spoiler is not a review, and we kind of want to get the assessment part out of the way, is just ask, you know, overall, did you like it? Would you send a friend to this movie? I think overall, yeah, I would recommend it to anyone that would ask if they should go see it. It's definitely not a perfect movie, but it's very strong. Like, what it's doing it does to the nth degree, I guess, and the flaws that it has while worth discussing are not enough so that I would say avoid this. I think I mean, I'm not quite sure where to put myself with this movie, but I think I disagree with you. Although I would also send people, I mean, I'm also somebody who thinks like you should see movies that aren't perfect by any, by all means, you know, and that it's fascinating to see movies like this that, like you say, are bold and strong and make intense choices. But I think I'm on the no fence on this movie in the end. And that has to do with the last 20 minutes. So that's why I'm glad we're spoiling it. Because if we were reviewing it, we'd have to tiptoe politely around that. But first, we should set up what promising young woman is. So it's the directorial debut and, you know, writing a feature film as well, debut of Emerald Fennell, who is best known as the showrunner for Killing Eve. I wonder, do you watch that show, and do you have strong feelings about that show? I watched the first season, which Phoebe Waller Bridge was the showruner for, and I really enjoy the first season. I unfortunately just never caught up with a show after that, which is when Emerald Fennell took over. So I unfortunately don't have much more comment beyond that. Oh, too bad, because I'm in the same position. Watch the first season. Loved it. And then I actually skipped the second season because I heard that it had gone downhill, that it wasn't as good. And I kind of meant to watch it at some point, but never did. Now having seen this, I can both see very well how the person who made this would be involved with killing Eve. And we can talk about some of the similarities. But I can also see why that sensibility might have taken the show in a direction that I didn't care for. Yeah, I feel exactly the same way about it. Yeah. Well, maybe let's talk a little bit about the similarities then, because they have to do with the look and the style, and that's such a huge part of this movie, you know, the color palette, the music choices, just the way it feels to be to be watching it. Do you have any

thoughts about that? I mean, I think that's kind of one of the more fun aspects of it, where it's

taking all these colors, clothing items, even songs that we traditionally think of as like very

girly and therefore not to be taken seriously and use them in a story that is about very serious things.

And sort of, I think the word that a lot of people use to describe this movie and also

Kaling Eve is like weaponizing femininity, which is what I think it does.

But kind of on the inverse side of that, to go back to what we are saying about Killing

Eve, maybe taking a little bit of a

hit in its second season. It's also a very kind of white femininity, which my primary memory, again,

not having seen the second season of Killing Eve, is of one of the writers tweeting out a picture

of the writer's room after they'd finished the, they'd finished the season and being like, oh, like, congrats to us.

And it was all white staffers.

And they deleted the picture after someone commented on that as maybe why the focus had shifted away from Sandra O's character or wasn't doing as much with her as it had in the first season.

Oh, my God.

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