[Rating: Minor Rock Fist Down]
Now in theaters.
The drama and controversy surrounding Olivia Wilde’s new feature film, Don’t Worry Darling, is the Hollywood fluff that keeps the headlines churning. The film, starring Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, and Chris Pine, has more than production conflicts, rumored feuds, and “spit-gate” drama to worry about. This psychological thriller sets a perfect little world of hard-working men and their happy housewives. But when a deeper look is taken, the flaws in their utopia start to show.
The music is the first thing that hits you as the movie starts. It acts as the soundtrack for the carefree nature and debaucherous social parties, conducted by a group of friends in this 1950s town called Victory. Jack (Styles) and Alice (Pugh) are the young and handsome couple who, along with their neighbors Bill & Bunny (Nick Kroll and Wilde herself) live in this perfect structured setting. The men go to work, driving across the desert to their classified jobs where they work on the “development of progressive materials.” The women stay at home to clean their homes and take the trolley into town to shop, do ballet, and socialize. Everything is stereotypical of the times… very controlled and disciplined. This all changes when Alice notices troubling disruptions in her environment, from issues with her former friend Margaret (Kiki Layne) to the restrictions placed around them. She believes that the head of “The Victory Project” (Pine) may be hiding things about their experimental community.
The story by Carey Van Dyke, Shane Van Dyke, and Katie Silberman, who also adapted it into the screenplay, is simple yet ambitious. At times, it’s sexy and at other times, spooky. Strangely, there are traces of Ira Levin’s novel, The Stepford Wives, in there that are hard to ignore. There are memorable things about the movie such as its amazing cinematography, especially with the ultra-wide landscape shots of the desert. The sound effects and score are haunting at times. And while Pine gives the best performance, Pugh holds your interest in the lead role.
Unfortunately, Styles’ acting is flat and vapid. He plays the role with all the charm of an NPC in a video game and is outperformed by the better actors around him. Wilde, as a director, attempts to keep a hold on the story but the ending falls flat. The last act fails to give the conclusion needed to make this film complete (despite its bloated runtime) and ravels out of control. The ending of the film stops short and needed some type of epilogue to resolve the story.
Don’t Worry Darling had potential but is mired in pacing issues and a lack of editing. Knowing the great job that Wilde did with her first feature, Booksmart, I would point the finger of blame at the script. Overall, the script is a shell of what it could’ve been. It’s filled with plotholes and unexplained events. Despite its shortcomings, I would like to see it again, now knowing the truth about Victory.
KB is a native New Yorker/Midwest transplant who’s into tech, sports, and the arts, especially film and music. He still aspires to be a DJ in his other life. You can frequently catch him watching Hitchcock classics, film noir, and anything Star Wars.
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