Don’t Worry Darling
Florence Pugh as Alice Chambers and Harry Styles as Jack Chambers in Don’t Worry Darling
A tale of screaming and spitting - the drama that transpiried in the production and release of Olivia Wilde’s sophomore feature effort could be fodder enough for a behind-the-scenes documentary. It has taken up so much of the discourse online, that one could be caught thinking to thesmelves: “oh … shit … we can actually see the film now instead of making memes about it".
Many may be expecting a dumpster fire of epic proportions after feasting on the parade of Harry Styles phlegm-posting pics that are took up twitter for half a month. After having seen it, I can tell you this; Don’t Worry Darling isn’t quite the momumentally vile product of the gossipy going-ons. Instead, Wilde aims for Get Out and The Truman Show … whilst barely striking mid-grade Black Mirror.
Set in a 1950s-style Californian Community of beautiful women and equally handsome men, Alice Chambers (Pugh) lives a model life with her model husband (Styles) in her model neighbourhood. However, after experiencing round-the-clock hallucinations, Chambers starts to wonder how ‘crazy’ she really is … and how real her flawless reality, helmed by a devious Chris Pine, appears to be.
From second 1, Don’t Worry Darling assaults you with subliminal fluff. Editing into the protagonist’s psyche with enough edge that it could cut the auditorium’s air. I hadn’t even begun my popcorn before we’re nose-diving straight into Pugh’s narrative descent down the rabbit hole of conspiracy through werid and wild shots of dancing demons.
There isn’t even a semblance of breathing room here, this world is created for us to react to, and we’re already looking to escape from it. How can your paradise within a secret dystopia be believable if the dystopia isn’t a secret? The film is almost too eager to present the hidden hell within its core, so much so, that we’re not allowed time to develop our feelings toward anyone at all. Oh, who’s this main character? Well, she’s going fucking nuts already. Alrighty then.
Going back to that infamous online discourse, it’s always a risk when posting film clips out of context in an effort to make something look worse than it actually is. None more so, than those ones of Harry Styles in this film. Here though, there’s a point to be made. Now, is Styles bad? Yes. However, no one is really great here, and I’m including Pugh in that. Florence makes the most of what she’s given, but I’m not so sure that even Styles with 1000 hours of acting-lessons under his belt would’ve put forward a transcendent performance here. The script wouldn’t allow for that. The dialogue in this film is a pebble-dash job of shouting matches amongst sappy gaslighting games where any kind of subtlety that attempts to grow from it, tries so from salted earth.
Don’t Worry Darling isn’t without its moments. After the truly horrendous first third or so, we’re treated to an excellently tense dinner table scene, where Pugh and Pine get to shine. There’s a particular turn in the last act of the film that didn’t necessarily improve the narrative, but rather made it at the very least more ridiculous and interesting.
All the visual flair and trickery the movie tries to dazzle us by is appreciatable in moments, but it’s all for the service of what, exactly? A thriller that ends specifically where you’d expect a thriller this chaotically haphazard ends, slamming its head into a wall of glass.
