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How Basic Instinct, Fight Club, and Hitchcock Shaped Do Revenge
‘Do Revenge’ director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson on the (unexpected) cinematic influences that molded her teen comedy, from Hitchcock’s ‘Strangers on a Train’ to ‘The Birdcage’ and beyond.

How Basic Instinct, Fight Club, and Hitchcock Shaped Do Revenge

In the candy-coated black comedy Do Revenge, payback is best served in pastel with a side of “Glennergy.”

The campy teen satire highlights the deliciously duplicitous and unlikely bond between Drea (Camila Mendes), a dethroned queen bee who wants to exact revenge on her ex-boyfriend for leaking a sex tape, and Eleanor (Maya Hawke), an awkward transfer student who wants to get even with the girl who outed her at summer camp. Cue a series of impressive attempts to take down the bullies who wronged them: drugging the entire senior class with mushrooms, exposing Drea’s golden-boy ex as a cheater, and a lot of blackmail.

Embedded within the film’s palm-tree-littered Miami backdrop is a well of obvious homages to teen-movie nostalgia — from the posh plaid uniforms that evoke Cher and Dionne’s stylish ensembles in Clueless to Sarah Michelle Gellar’s presence as a headmaster in Cruel Intentions — and a Gen Z–friendly soundtrack that includes Olivia Rodrigo, Muna, and Billie Eilish.

Writer-director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson — the mastermind behind the buddy-comedy rom-com Someone Great and the canceled-too-soon TV series Sweet/Vicious — channeled a ton of deep cinematic and style references along with easier-to-spot visual tributes to rom-com classics. Here, she walks us through her inspirations in her own words.

The style: Winona Ryder grunge meets Fran Fine couture.






Photo: Warner Bros. Pictures/YouTube

The light tunnel that the girls travel down before they get into the admissions party was our Do Revenge version of the “Tunnel of Love” scene from Strangers on a Train. I watched Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby when we were leading into the admissions party because I didn’t want it to feel like a high-school party you had seen before. I wanted to feel very bacchanalian and debaucherous but incredibly glamorous. Gatsby, to me, felt like the best encapsulation of what I wanted to put onscreen. So we have the witch room and we have that beautiful cloud room with all of these beautiful different-colored lights in them. Another movie that inspired me for the admission party was Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette. I wanted it to be dripping with opulence but in a very candy-coated, glittery way.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

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