To be honest the only reason I rented Girl (2020) was because it turned up on iTunes for 99 cents (though the actress on the poster – Bella Thorne – with a hatchet certainly didn’t hurt it’s chances).

I’m not entirely sure what I expected from the movie though being unfamiliar with Thorne – I’m sure I’ve seen her in other things nothing comes to mind – and Chad Faust (who wrote and directed) might have had more than a little to do with me going in with relatively few preconceptions.

Though someone I am familiar with is Mickey Rourke, who’s also stars. He’s interesting because every time I see him he’s on screen my mind starts to wander, speculating what happened to his face. I recall reading somewhere that he was a boxer at some point though unless he was a fighter who deliberately blocked punches with his face there’s no way it should look like it’s a special effect or made of Silly Putty.

The movie revolves around a woman (Bela Thorne) who returns to her hometown after an indeterminate time away (it’s feels like years though like her name, details are somewhat vague, deliberately so).

She’s pissed and has bloody vengeance on her mind, and no intention of letting anything – or anyone – get in her way.

It’s essentially Sunny Came Home The Movie.

And that’s not a bad think because Sunny Came Home is a great song, and Girl is pretty good as well though what’s distinctive about it is that – while adjacent to the female empowerment/revenge thriller – it’s not.

It certainly starts that way though when she when she discovers that that the person she’s seemingly spent years preparing to wreak vengeance upon has been murdered, everything changes.

It’s an interesting twist, and changes the movie from either I Spit on Your Grave (1971), Kill Bill Vol: 1 & 2 (2003 & 2004) or numerous other female revenge thrillers into something really interesting.

It was good enough that I eventually stopped caring about Rourke’s face, which is saying something.