To say that "Don't Worry Darling" is a cross between "The Stepford Wives" and "Get Out" is both accurate and deeply misleading. It's accurate because Olivia Wilde's somewhat frenetic satirical psychological thriller borrows from movies like "Stepford," where an idealized community is one in which women are dolls designed for male gratification, and "Get Out," which uses frills of terror to grapple with timely questions of power and privilege.
But it's misleading because there's another movie "Don't Worry Darling" owes even more than those two, but even mentioning the other movie's name would be revealing a crucial plot twist that happens at the end of the movie. and change everything.
Director: Olivia Wilde
Writers: Katie Silberman, Carey Van Dyke, Shane Van Dyke
Stars: Florence Pugh, Olivia Wilde, Chris Pine
It was unfair for everyone on Twitter to make fun of Harry Styles, based on a single clip online out of context, for his crooked and unconvincing transatlantic accent in this film. Turns out there's a reason for it. Unfortunately, that reason is part of a larger clumsiness and lack of conviction in this beautifully crafted but misunderstood, plodding, derivative mystery cooler. Directed by Olivia Wilde, it disdainfully pulls ideas from other films without quite understanding how and why they worked in the first place. It ruins its own ending simply by revealing it, and in doing so it shows that some serious script work is needed to fill in the plot holes and problems in a fantastically silly twist reveal.
The setting is 1950s suburbia, or some eerily fabricated alternate-reality version of 1950s suburbia, a perfect, perfect setting for a satire on conformity and patriarchy. This is a gleaming new housing development in the California desert, featuring state-of-the-art homes for families and couples of upscale professionals; there are retail shops and a posh country club for tennis and swimming. And they all work for a single company with the slightly Orwellian name “Victoria”, which is also the name of the town. The company does top-secret work that employees are forbidden to talk about, and the town is periodically disturbed by crockery-rattling mini-earthquakes that everyone has learned to ignore. The wives have swallowed their anxiety and thus have a glazed, unaffectionate expression, like the Valium addicts of post-war America or those mannequins in the government-built sham "fatal cities" of nuclear testing. the United States in the Nevada desert.
Victory's golden couple is Jack (Styles) and his stay-at-home wife Alice (Florence Pugh), who are seemingly blissfully happy, in love and living the American Dream. Jack is on the brink of a serious promotion and they love hanging out with other Victory employees, like the witty Bunny, played by Wilde herself. But company boss Frank (Chris Pine) and his icy wife Shelley (Gemma Chan) have the chilling confidence of cult leaders. There is a strange and distraught outburst from a depressed escort wife at one of her claustrophobic parties, and Alice begins to suspect that something is seriously wrong.
Like Katharine Ross and Peter Masterson in Bryan Forbes' 1975 The Stepford Wives, or Jeanne Tripplehorn and Tom Cruise in Sydney Pollack's 1993 thriller The Firm, Jack and Alice are a couple who are initially charmed by how great they are. They are their lives and they don't suspect a thing. something is happening. They are seduced by the narcotic stupor of prosperity: the drinks, the food, the shiny cars and the incessant rattles of catchy music. But some hidden evil can be glimpsed.
So far so interesting... but where are we going with all this? The movie feels like it has to avoid the obvious reason for Victory's existence and go down the rabbit hole for something else: so when the switch is finally flipped to give us the big secret, it feels absurdly insignificant and contrived, and the details are not thought out. through. Styles may or may not be a talented actor; It's not easy to tell from this, but the normally excellent Pugh hasn't been interestingly directed, certainly not compared to his work in broadly comparable films like Midsommar or The Falling.