In the 1950s, Alice and Jack live in the idealised community of Victory, an experimental town that houses men who work on a top-secret project. While the husbands toil away, the wives enjoy the beauty, luxury and debauchery of their seemingly perfect paradise. However, when cracks in her idyllic life begin to appear, and flashes of something sinister, Alice can't help but question reality.
Don’t Worry Darling (2022) is a difficult movie to digest, from the outside it appears to be an intriguing look on domestic life during the 50s but once you take a closer look you realise this film is a lot of nothing. Not a lot happens during this feature, aside form some beautiful landscapes, costumes and stylised choices it’s simply a lot of fluff. The narrative is simplistic and ambiguous, we don’t get any answers until the very end, the whole film leads to one massive climax but the reveal isn’t satisfying enough. The marketing team did a fantastic job of covering up the softness and basic side of the story with famous faces and some raunchy moments but deep down, this film is a lot of clever camera angles and unnecessarily long intimate scenes between Pugh and Styles.
Florence Pugh is a powerhouse, I knew this before and this film only solidified my feelings. She is a star in the making and I adore seeing her perform. Olivia Wilde created a world and a truly beautiful imagery surrounding this film. I really enjoyed watching it for the visuals alone and thought she directed her actors very well. The cast all did a great job supporting Pugh, she was the headliner and they helped her get there. Styles, Kroll, Wilde, Pine and more all supported her well and brought dynamic performances to compliment hers.
Sadly this film has had a lot of media coverage for the wrong reasons, whether those rumours are true or false the film benefited off them hugely because this is a weak film. Marketing off of Harry Styles established popularity was intelligent and made a lot of people go see this film, caring about the story or not. The film was too long, several moments could have been cut. It was a lot to digest and too much to sit through. This film is described as a ‘thriller/horror’ - I understand the thrill but the horror? This film has little to no horror elements to it, don’t want this film expecting a horror movie, you’ll be disappointed.
Overall, Don’t Worry Darling (2022) is a memorable feature with a somewhat compelling story which doesn’t quite fulfill its promises. From the outside we see a dynamic plot with themes of feminism, entrapment, control and false reality but the film only became truly interesting during the second half.
(I have to address that this feature is a modernised version of the classic ‘The Stepford Wives’ (2004), a lot of the moments really reminded me of this film and it made me predict some of the ‘big’ reveals at the end. Although Don’t Worry Darling (2022) did modernise the story, bringing in metaphors and symbolism, at its core this film is a slow burning enigma which will leave you tangling for answers until the very end. We get to see a lot happen but when you take a step back, nothing really happens. Watch this film for Florence Pugh and if you happen to be a Harry Styles fan, watch for him too, that seems to be a draw for this film.)
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