Somewhere, Joan Rivers is rolling in her grave. While on her way to becoming a household name in 1973, the comedian conceived the story of (and along with Agnes Gallin, co-scripted the teleplay for) a black comedy about a young meeskite (Stockard Channing) who undergoes plastic surgery after a car accident leaves her disfigured. Once the bandages are removed, the ugly duckling turned swan sets about getting even with all who mocked her. Have we seen The Girl Most Likely to…? I’ll bet the farm that Emerald Fennell, writer and director of Promising Young Woman, has a DVD copy in her collection. Med School dropout Cassie Thomas (Carey Mulligan) lives with her parents (a marginalized Clancy Brown and Jennifer Coolidge), and spends her weekends at local bars, ostensibly avenging the gang rape and next-day suicide of her best friend Nina. Cassie puts her own spin on To Catch a Predator by feigning intoxication just long enough to lure her prey to someplace private where she can confront them with a harrowing come-to-Jesus moment. All that changes when a video of the assault surfaces, right around the same time the main assailant is set to have his bachelor party. As good a performance as it is, I’m not sure Mulligan’s work is enough to cut through the repugnance to warrant a recommendation. Unpleasant as it may seem, there is no such thing as a bad genre — even rape-revenge, as evidenced by Coralie Fargeat’s over-the-top manual on payback, Revenge — only inattentive storytellers. For her debut feature, actress-turned-director Fennell came up with a superb ending and apparently worked backwards, handily proving the old adage: imitation is the sincerest form of failure. (2020) — Scott Marks