Promising Young Woman is a film about a woman in her thirties who spends her weekends going out to bars, alone, acting as though she is black-out drunk. In this state, she gets many men to bring her home. She waits for them to take advantage of her, and at that moment she teaches them a lesson in the revelation of her sobriety. She performs this act as sort of revenge for her late college best friend who was brutally raped by many men in their medical school class. Upon reconnecting with a man who she ends up dating from her class, she enacts the ultimate revenge on the original perpetrators of the crime, in hopes of bestowing some sort of rectitude for her friend.
The moral issue this film addresses is the commonality of sexual assault in our society, even among the men who label themselves as “the good guys.” Furthermore, the film goes on to depict how it is morally equivalent to be the one who partook in the assault or the one who was just an onlooker. The movie ends relatively unsettlingly, portraying the point that these situations always end in loss.