Don't Worry Darling. M, 123 minutes. Three stars.
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It's said any publicity is good publicity, but surely there are limits. A lot of attention has been focused on things other than Don't Worry Darling itself. Was Shia LaBeouf fired or did he quit? Did Olivia Wilde cheat on Jason Suidekis with LaBeouf's replacement, Harry Styles? Did Wilde and Florence Pugh have a feud and if so, why? And not to mention, did Styles spit on Chris Pine?
We could go on but let's turn instead to the film itself, which I saw with an attentive audience at Dendy. It's an intriguing but somewhat muddled mix of satire, horror and science fiction with influences ranging from Gaslight and The Stepford Wives to (according to director-actor Wilde) The Truman Show, Inception and The Matrix. Not to mention filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan (there is, of course, a big twist).
Jack (Styles) and his wife Alice (Pugh) are newcomers to a community that could be seen as either hellish or heavenly. It's the small town of Victory, a kind of 1950s desert utopia where the men go off every day to their secret work at Victory Headquarters to develop "progressive materials" (whatever they are) while the women stay home to clean, cook and raise the kids or go to exercise classes and the mall. People smoke and drink and eat fried foods and different races live happily together, all under the leadership of the chief executive officer, Frank (Pine). All you have to do is be discreet, not leave and not ask too many questions.
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But - surprise, surprise - all is not as idyllic at it seems, even if you're on board the Victory train. Jack and Alice seem deeply in love - smiles and sweetness and lots of sex (with her pleasure being emphasised) - but she's not 100 per cent happy. Strange things start happening and Alice soon begins to realise that something is wrong. Can she discover the truth? And even if she does, will anyone believe her before it's too late?
And sometimes it does. The production design looks good, capturing the feeling of a desert oasis with something amiss, and the actors make a good ensemble. Even Styles is pretty effective despite an accent that occasionally veers into American even though his character is British, as he is. The standouts are Pugh, unsurprisingly, and Pine as the charming but cold leader - their confrontation during the dinner party where Alice tries to convince everyone that something's wrong is a highlight. Timothy Simons is effectively creepy in a supporting role as a doctor.
Don't Worry Darling maintains interest but feels like it should have been better. Especially towards the end it becomes a bit of a mess - the script underwent a lot of rewriting and it shows. Some of the story holes are apparent even while watching with many questions left unanswered in a frustrating rather than thought-provoking way. Some non-spoilery ones that come to mind immediately: what's with the aeroplane? And the earthquakes? What is that recurring dream with its eyeballs and bird's-eye-view dance scenes all about? The climactic revelation only brings up more questions.
The roles of the two significant black characters, played by Kiki Layne and Ari'el Stachel, were heavily trimmed and we can only wonder what else was left on the metaphorical cutting room floor.
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