Don't Worry Darling (2022)

By: Mike Ward on Thursday, September 29

R Running Time: 123 mins

SHOULD I SEE IT?

YES

  • Don’t Worry Darling is trashy melodrama, with a bonkers twist, and let me tell you - I am here for it.

  • We must protect Florence Pugh at all costs. She carries the film on her shoulders and proves yet again to be one of our finest working actors.

  • Technically impressive, from terrific production design and costumes and, for awhile, Olivia Wilde creates a tense and mysterious, unnerving atmosphere.

NO

  • Impales itself with a third act for the ages - a twist that is as silly as it is bold, as ridiculous as it is a conversation-starter. Problem is…the conversations it creates make you realize just how nonsensical this all is.

  • Feels like a movie that overwhelmed its director - through off-screen distraction and what has to be studio manipulation, Don’t Worry Darling is just a headscratcher.

  • The plot holes found here could swallow the universe.


OUR REVIEW

You really have to admire how absolutely bonkers Don’t Worry Darling is, and how wild it becomes, over the course of its two-plus hour running time. A movie full of spoilers, there is not a ton that can be said without ruining Olivia Wilde’s new film. However, there is so much to chew on here, you can’t help but develop a case of lockjaw trying to chomp around the details that create a potential for this to be a modern-day cult classic and eventual guilty pleasure.

For starters, Don’t Worry Darling arrives on a capstone of buzz and controversy. All of it has been written about ad nauseum - the alleged fight on set between Wilde and lead actor Florence Pugh; Wilde’s romance with leading man Harry Styles. The insane circumstances around the film’s official premiere at the Venice International Film Festival where Wilde and Pugh barely acknowledged each other, Wilde and Styles barely acknowledged each other, Styles (didn’t actually) spit on Chris Pine, and tensions apparently were so thick you could cut them with a knife.

Knives, in fact, play a prominent role in Don’t Worry Darling. Slicing and dicing toast, carrots, potatoes, and other things, the doting wives of the Victory housing community make breakfast, prepare lunches, clean incessantly and have dinner waiting for their husbands after their hard day’s work. They walk their husbands out to their cars, and collectively, all wave them off as the men leave all at the same time. It’s the 1950s; a throwback utopia of masculinity and control some men still long for and others hope to see return.

Alice (Pugh) is one of those wives, married to Jack (Styles). Relatively recent arrivals to Victory, Jack has secured work with the Victory Project, a top secret organization led by the reclusive Frank (Pine). With everything provided for them by the Victory Project, their life is idyllic, quiet, and steeped in the tradition of women as subservient homemakers. Sure they can have opinions, as long as the house is clean, the body is slim and child-bearing and the men don’t have to worry about anything other than the things that matter to them.

From the jump, if not for the misogyny, something seems off in Victory - something Alice notices when she sees Margaret (KiKi Layne) not falling in line as the other wives in the community. When she observes a horrific event, she is told that what she witnessed is not accurate. She is told things are fine, that Margaret is fine. A community doctor offers pills, followed by the always ominous exit line, “Jack, can I have a word?”

As Alice starts to envision things - momentary glitches at first, more sustained visions later, she sees her role in Victory as a gateway to investigate. And as she starts to decipher more and more around her, this is where Wilde’s film, written by her Booksmart collaborator Katie Silberman from a story concept by screenwriters/actors/brothers Carey and Shane Van Dyke, goes off the rails and becomes one of the most ambitious, ludicrous, and downright head-scratching films of recent memory. 

It’s wild, y’all. Wacky as hell.

For a film to spin off so willingly into the land of WTF, what remains so confounding is how Wilde absolutely nails the look, tone, and atmosphere of this film for so, so long. The candy colored cars call to a simpler, perhaps innocent time. Katie Byron’s production design of the Victory residences, look, at once, as synthetic and false as they seem genuine. Matthew Libatique’s cinematography is stellar, blending the latent and imagined terror enveloping Alice the deeper she dives into Victory’s reality. On top of that, multiple-time Oscar nominee Arianne Phillips has created an ensemble of suits, dresses, and clothing styles that leap off the screen. Wilde immerses us deeply into this world and hooks us with the aesthetic.

She also gets a tremendous performance from Pugh, continuing to prove she is one of the finest actors working today. Wilde hangs the movie on her shoulders, and she handles the complexities within her character expertly. Even in her compliance as a wife, she is studying others, absorbing the world she finds herself in and not afraid to ask questions few, if anyone, is willing to answer.

Styles is solid; though he appears on screen less here than some are anticipating. The biggest pop star in the world at the moment, he handles his first leading role well - though when the movie calls for him to be more than the dashing, perfectly coiffed, suit-wearing, classic-cut movie star, he struggles to prove convincing. Pugh carries him through.

But then…BUT THEN…what in the world? Like literally. Don’t Worry Darling takes a third act turn that is an absolute bell-ringer. Others have spoiled it. I will not. 

Initially, I appreciated Wilde’s audacity. Then, when you start to ask simple, basic questions - the entire film falls apart. And I mean, the entire film. If I had to guess, the gyrations this movie churns through to reach its final resting place feels like the work of too many chefs in the kitchen. They overdressed the salad. Added too much spice to the pot roast. The aftertaste on all of this turns wicked and foul, for discerning palates only.

I’d be lying though if I didn’t admit that I had a stupid amount of fun with all of this. When it builds to a climactic final scene which completes the story, but is also a moment which occurred earlier in the film but failed to, well, complete the story, I howled. I smiled. I scratched my head. TikTok users have a million theories as to what is actually going on in Don’t Worry Darling. No one knows. Not really. Once you watch it, I mean, how could anyone possibly know?

In the end, the brilliant technical achievement, the sublime Florence Pugh, and a committed director who may have let off-screen distraction and studio brass steal her film away from her, leaves Don’t Worry Darling as one of 2022’s most unforgettable cinematic moments. For better, or perhaps for worse, we’ll be talking about this thing for years to come.    

CAST & CREW

Starring: Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, Chris Pine, Olivia Wilde, KiKi Layne, Gemma Chan, Nick Kroll, Sydney Chandler, Kate Berlant, Asif Ali, Douglas Smith, Timothy Simons, Steve Berg.

Director: Olivia Wilde
Written by: Katie Silberman (screenplay); Carey Van Dyke, Shane Van Dyke (story)
Release Date: September 23, 2022
Warner Bros.