A version of this story about “Promising Young Woman” and director Emerald Fennell first appeared in the Actors/Directors/Screenwriters issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine.

Much of the talk about Emerald Fennell’s “Promising Young Woman” has been about how the film subverts the revenge genre, tempting the audience to beg for blood only to be left with something more disturbing. The real trick, though, is that it twists another genre: comedy.

That’s because Fennell has seen plenty of comedies where the joke is that the drunk girl goes home with the guy and he “gets lucky”–and what’s not funny at all is how common this setup has become.

“Really, it’s just taking material we’ve seen before, but we’re laughing at a different person,” Emerald Fennell said of the film, in which Carey Mulligan stars as Cassie, a young woman who sets up...