It’s been ages since I’ve been to the cinema and I caught this at a late afternoon Sunday screening at Picturehouse Central. The screening wasn’t too busy – less than a quarter full. But on the plus side, at least I escaped seeing one mobbed by teenage Harry Styles fans!
Anyway, this is Olivia Wilde’s latest. I loved BOOKSMART, her smart and funny directorial debut. DON’T WORRY DARLING is a very different beast in both terms of genre and style. It’s a psychological horror drama with Florence Pugh’s character, Alice, going deep down the rabbit hole to discover the sinister forces underpinning the superficially blissful, corporate suburban 1950s existence she shares with her husband (Styles). An isolated desert community where all the men work for the mysterious “Victory Project” company and the women fulfil their consumerist dreams as well-kept housewives.
There’s an awful lot of Ira Levin’s THE STEPFORD WIVES in its DNA, as well as other films about fractured identity like SHUTTER ISLAND and even 1999’s THE THIRTEENTH FLOOR. Florence Pugh gives another outstanding lead performance here, portraying Alice’s creeping paranoia and disintegrating sense of reality brilliantly. She’s pitted against Chris Pine’s mysterious cult-like leader of the community and Pine is always pretty good in menacing roles. The film certainly looks great, with some wonderful retro production design and extremely handsome cinematography married to some rather trippy visual sequences.
It’s pretty good, mostly. Some great scenes and a great sense of building tension throughout until the secret is revealed. But I think it jumped the shark a bit at the end, with a brief but odd – and slightly ludicrous – swerve into cheesy action movie territory. It really jarred and felt like a real unnecessary slip-up. Especially since the rest of the film had up to that point been a lot more cerebral and stylish.
I’m guessing some of the messiness is a legacy of the infamous problems it had in production, with multiple cast members leaving and being replaced (and a trail of spicy, acrimonious gossip leaking out in the aftermath). It’s a shame, as it’s not a bad film at all. It’s no TRUMAN SHOW, but then again, what is?
