We’ve often heard about men getting revenge on someone who did them wrong or for something they’ve lost before. But what if it’s a female that takes this role? Proving that women are no less than men in any field. Even if it’s taking revenge, the characters in these movies seek justice on their own, making it even more empowering for all the women. So here are the top 10 female revenge movies of all time.
Top 10 Hollywood Female Revenge Movies
1. Promising Young Woman (2020)
The recent entry on this list, Promising Young Woman, focuses on the titular young woman named Cassandra Thomas, who sets out to avenge her best friend’s suicide by taking down predators who roam around the city at night. While it gives a realistic and refreshing take on the story, the ending is a bit of a let-down, but the story is still good and worth watching.
2. First Wives Club (1996)
Not all revenge movies are about blood and grit, as First Wives Club focuses on the plans and tactics of three divorcées against their ex-husbands. After finding out that their respective husbands are cheating on them and after their friend commits suicide over one of them, the trio makes up a plan to take down their husbands, defraud them, and use their money for good.
3. I Spit On Your Grave (1978)
Let’s just say this revenge movie is not for the faint of heart. It focuses on a young writer who goes to a quiet cabin for a retreat so that she could focus on her writing. But all of that gets ruined when a bunch of nasty men end up molesting her and leave her for dead. But she doesn’t take this lying down as she takes matters into her own hand and decides to take her attackers down.
4. Sympathy For Lady Vengeance (2005)
Park Chan-Wook is known for making movies that are fueled with vengeance. One of them being Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. It focuses on a young woman Lee Geum Ja who gets released from prison after 13 years. Most people believe that she’s been spiritually reformed, but little do they know that she’s been preparing for revenge against a man who framed her for a crime she didn’t commit, that got her imprisoned in the first place. With the help of her fellow inmates, she tries to take him down and find redemption.
5. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011)
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is a psychological thriller based on the novel by the same name. It focuses on the partnership between elusive hacker Lisbeth Salander and journalist Mikael Blomkvist as they try to search for a missing girl. But side by side, Lisbeth even tries to deal with her demons, inner and outward. She gets raped by her tenant and finally gets her revenge on him by threatening him and graphically marking him to make sure he remembers that he made a grave mistake.
6. Hard Candy (2005)
This movie isn’t an easy watch, nor is it a justifiable revenge story. However, it is a revenge movie for every young girl who has been wronged by sexual predators. But that doesn’t mean this movie is easy to sit through. Hard Candy starts simple enough, with Jeff coaxing Hayley, a teenage girl, to hang out with him in his house. Then things turn for the worse when she drugs him and tortures him throughout the movie.
7. Jennifer’s Body (2009)
Jennifer’s Body is the kind of revenge movie that completely subverts the male gaze and redefines the genre. It focuses on Jennifer Check, a high schooler who gets brutally murdered by a satanic band and is resurrected as a demon who goes on a carnivorous rampage where she kills boys and eats their blood while seeking her revenge.
8. Audition (1999)
This movie is where the revenge taker is portrayed as a psycho villain, but I had to add it here. The movie focuses on a widower who holds an audition to find his new wife. One woman, Asami Yamazaki, enters his life, and he ends up falling in love with her. But things go south when she reveals her dark, twisted side and begins to torture him for “taking advantage of her.”
9. Revenge (2018)
At first, this movie might seem like a gratuitous, exploitative revenge film, but luckily it completely subverts the tropes and is the revenge movie we all know and love. The movie focuses on a socialite Jen, who is raped by one of her lover’s friends and is left for dead. She then comes back alive to take down the men who hurt her one by one and becomes the avenging angel we all know and love.
10. Kill Bill (2003)
Kill Bill is one of the movies that has wholly defined the female revenge movie genre and has introduced us to it. The movie is about an assassin who gets revenge on her boss for killing her friends and family on her wedding day—regarded as one of the most iconic movies of all time, Uma Thurman’s performance as the Bride is simply outstanding.
