What do you get when you combine ’90s nostalgia with a Gen Z edge? That would be the black comedy Do Revenge, a Hitchcockian tale about two teen girls (Camila Mendes’ Drea and Maya Hawke’s Eleanor) who set out to get payback on each other’s tormentors — set to a rad ’90s soundtrack mixed with fresh 2022 jams. “We wanted it to be the perfect intersection between new and nostalgia,” director-cowriter Jennifer Kaytin Robinson tells Tudum.

Taking inspiration from the endlessly rewatchable comedies that dominated the ’90s, Robinson’s film is filled with needle drops synonymous with the decade: Harvey Danger’s “Flagpole Sitta,” The Cranberries’ “Dreams,” Meredith Brooks’ “Bitch,” The Mighty Mighty Bosstones’ “The Impression That I Get.” But those classics live alongside very contemporary tunes like Olivia Rodrigo’s “Brutal,” MUNA and Phoebe Bridgers’ “Silk Chiffon,” Chloe Adams’ “Dead to Me” and Hayley Kiyoko’s “For the Girls.”

And then there are the covers, one of which will delight millennial and Gen X viewers (a Bridgerton-style string quartet rendition of OMC’s “How Bizarre”), and another that bridges the gap between generations (Maude Latour’s rendition of the Clueless soundtrack classic “Kids in America,” commissioned specifically for the film). 

Robinson and  music supervisor Rob Lowry began collaborating on the movie’s music even before she’d cast it — something that doesn’t often happen in that order. “You usually bring a music supervisor on maybe when you’re shooting, if you have things that are on camera, but usually in post,” she says. However, she’d written at least 40 songs into her script, which meant Lowry was going to have to start getting permissions as quickly as possible. He ended up clearing around 200 tracks.

Originally the two had planned on strictly using covers of ’90s music, but “the sonic identity of the movie changed and evolved as the film took shape and was brought to life,” Robinson explains. Below, the director and her “musical soulmate,” Lowry, explain exactly how they put together the ’90s playlist of your — and their — dreams.

“Celebrity Skin”

Courtney Love’s lyrics on the Hole classic touch on the perils of being in the public eye, something Mendes’ popular Drea comes to understand very well. “We really examined everything from song titles, to lyrics, to the feeling, to the evolution of how the music is changing and morphing with the emotional arc of the film, and it really does follow Drea and Eleanor’s emotional arc,” says Robinson. “Hopefully the soundtrack tells its own story and you feel like you’re listening to a fairy tale in listening to the soundtrack — a fairy tale of revenge.”

Le Tigre “Deceptacon” 

When Lowry and Robinson first met, they bonded over their shared musical tastes — and their shared love of films like Cruel Intentions and Can’t Hardly Wait. “Jenn and I both genuinely came of age during the peak of those [’90s] films, and I think they all shaped our case cinematically and musically,” says Lowry. That’s why Do Revenge’s soundtrack “is a love letter to those things, while being its own thing,” he says, and includes dance floor favorites like this Le Tigre tune.

“The Impression That I Get” 

Another formative film for the duo: Clueless, which featured ska-punk icons The Mighty Mighty Bosstones in a frat party cameo. In Do Revenge, their biggest single plays as Sophie Turner’s character gets kicked out of tennis camp. Says Robinson, “There was a feeling of going to Best Buy or Barnes & Noble and just devouring a soundtrack, having that CD, having that physical media. And while that [mostly] doesn’t exist anymore, I think the feeling still does and that emotion still does. It was really tapping into the emotion of unwrapping a soundtrack. That is what we want this movie to feel like.”

“How Bizarre” 

The dulcet tones of this OMC classic — as performed by a string quartet — ring out as the Rosehill Country Day students stream into their senior ring ceremony. And while it might not immediately be recognizable to younger viewers, older ones will know what’s playing right away. Explains Robinson, “This movie doesn’t live in reality. You are living in the world of Do Revenge. What are the rules of the world of Do Revenge? We wanted to be able to have fun with music beyond just the fact that the needle drops are incredibly fun and soundtrack each moment so beautifully in their different ways. I think the idea of being able to play with music in that way was really exciting. I don’t know that everyone is going to know that reference, but the people that know it are going to love it.”

“Kids in America” 

“Rob and I didn’t want to abandon the idea of the cover because we really did love that idea,” Robinson says. But after they decided to use Olivia Rodrigo’s “Brutal” over the opening titles, they knew it had to be a mix of genres and generations. “In the same way that I think a lot of the Gen Z music will be a discovery for millennials and Gen X, I think a lot of the ’90s songs are going to be a discovery for Gen Z. We wanted them to be able to discover those original tracks, but we really didn’t want to give up on the idea of a cover.” Enter Latour, who Lowry says “really delivered” on her version of this early 80s classic, used to perfection in 1995’s Clueless.

“Flagpole Sitta” 

It seems that Drea’s evil ex is about to get his comeuppance when he’s exposed for cheating on his girlfriend, but the smooth-talking class president pivots the messaging and gets the school back on his side as this iconic ’90s tune plays. “The fun thing about working together with Jenn,” says Lowry, “is we’re always trying to one-up whatever’s in there. It’s always an evolution in where we start and where we end.” A good number of the songs Robinson wrote into her script ended up in the film, and, as for the rest, “it at least sets the emotional template. It’s just like, ‘Okay, we know that this is the vibe.’ ”

“Praise You” 

“There are certain times where I can’t really crack a sequence until I know what song goes there,” says Robinson. “But I knew that I wanted ‘Praise You’ to be the song that plays during Max’s big come-up and takedown. It just felt really perfect. It was always in the script from the very, very beginning.”

“Bitch” 

The song that Drea and Eleanor sing as they ride off into the sunset, on the other hand, wasn’t what Robinson originally envisioned. (That would be Des’ree’s “You Gotta Be.”) “Even on set, the pop-punk quality to the soundtrack was emerging,” she says. “I called Rob and we brainstormed, and when we were in production, Rob was frantically trying to clear the Meredith Brooks song so they could sing it on camera. Thankfully, it was something that we were going to film at the very end of the shoot, so we had time.”

“Dreams” 

The end credits were scripted to Lenny Kravitz’s “It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over” — but it was too expensive. “I begged them to lower the price. It was a song I always wanted to use. But ‘Dreams,’ when you step back and look at the film as a whole, actually fits better. I wouldn’t call it a happy accident because it was very intentional, and I love having the Cranberries in the film. But it was kind of a blessing that we couldn’t get the song that was originally supposed to be there.” Adds Lowry, “In the context of where we ended up musically with everything else, I think the Cranberries is the perfect fit.”